FIRST DIVISION
|
PCI LEASING AND FINANCE, INC., Petitioner, - versus - GIRAFFE-X CREATIVE IMAGING, INC., Respondent. |
G.R. No. 142618
Present: PUNO, C.J., Chairperson, *SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ, AZCUNA, and GARCIA, JJ. Promulgated: |
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D E C I S I O N
GARCIA, J.:
On a pure
question of law involving the application of Republic Act (R.A.) No. 5980, as
amended by R.A. No. 8556¸ in relation to Articles 1484 and 1485 of the Civil
Code, petitioner PCI Leasing and Finance, Inc. (PCI LEASING, for short) has
directly come to this Court via this
petition for review under Rule 45 of the Rules of Court to nullify and set aside
the Decision and Resolution dated December 28, 1998 and February 15, 2000,
respectively, of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Quezon City, Branch 227, in
its Civil Case No. Q-98-34266, a suit
for a sum of money and/or personal property
with prayer for a writ of replevin, thereat instituted by the petitioner
against the herein respondent, Giraffe-X Creative Imaging, Inc. (GIRAFFE, for
brevity).
The facts:
On December 4, 1996, petitioner
PCI LEASING and respondent GIRAFFE entered into a Lease Agreement,[1] whereby
the former leased out to the latter one (1) set of Silicon High Impact Graphics and accessories worth P3,900,00.00 and one
(1) unit of Oxberry Cinescan 6400-10
worth P6,500,000.00. In connection with this agreement, the parties
subsequently signed two (2) separate documents, each denominated as Lease Schedule.[2] Likewise forming parts of the basic lease agreement were two (2) separate documents
denominated Disclosure Statements of Loan/Credit Transaction (Single Payment or Installment Plan)[3] that
GIRAFFE also executed for each of the leased equipment. These disclosure
statements inter alia described GIRAFFE,
vis-à-vis the two aforementioned
equipment, as the “borrower” who acknowledged
the “net proceeds of the loan,” the “net amount to be financed,” the “financial charges,” the “total installment payments” that it must
pay monthly for thirty-six (36) months, exclusive of the 36% per annum “late payment charges.” Thus, for the Silicon High Impact Graphics, GIRAFFE agreed to pay P116,878.21 monthly, and for Oxberry Cinescan, P181.362.00 monthly.
Hence, the total amount GIRAFFE has to pay PCI LEASING for 36 months of the
lease, exclusive of monetary penalties
imposable, if proper, is as indicated below:
P116,878.21 @ month (for the Silicon High
Impact
Graphics) x 36
months =
P 4,207,615.56
-- PLUS--
P181,362.00 @ month (for the Oxberry
Cinescan)
x 36 months =
P 6,529,032.00
Total Amount to be
paid by GIRAFFE
(or the NET CONTRACT AMOUNT)
P 10,736,647.56
By the terms, too, of the Lease
Agreement, GIRAFFE undertook to remit the amount of P3,120,000.00
by way of “guaranty deposit,” a sort of performance and compliance bond for
the two equipment. Furthermore, the same agreement embodied a standard
acceleration clause, operative in the event GIRAFFE fails to pay any rental
and/or other accounts due.
A year into the life of the Lease Agreement, GIRAFFE defaulted
in its monthly rental-payment obligations. And following a three-month default,
PCI LEASING, through one Atty. Florecita R. Gonzales, addressed a formal pay-or-surrender-equipment
type of demand letter[4]
dated
The demand went unheeded.
Hence, on
2. After
trial, judgment be rendered in favor of plaintiff [PCI LEASING] and against the
defendant [GIRAFFE], as follows:
a. Declaring
the plaintiff entitled to the possession of the subject properties;
b. Ordering
the defendant to pay the balance of rental/obligation in the total amount of P8,248,657.47
inclusive of interest and charges thereon;
c. Ordering
defendant to pay plaintiff the expenses of litigation and cost of suit…. (Words
in bracket added.)
Upon PCI LEASING’s posting of a replevin bond, the
trial court issued a writ of replevin, paving the way for PCI LEASING to secure
the seizure and delivery of the equipment covered by the basic lease agreement.
Instead of an answer, GIRAFFE, as defendant a quo, filed a Motion to Dismiss, therein arguing that the seizure of the two (2) leased
equipment stripped PCI LEASING of its cause of action. Expounding on the point, GIRAFFE argues that, pursuant to Article 1484
of the Civil Code on installment sales of personal property, PCI LEASING is
barred from further pursuing any claim arising from the lease agreement and the
companion contract documents, adding that the agreement between the parties is
in reality a lease of movables with option to buy. The given situation, GIRAFFE
continues, squarely brings into applicable play Articles 1484 and 1485 of the
Civil Code, commonly referred to as the Recto
Law. The cited articles respectively provide:
ART.
1484. In a contract of sale of personal property the price of which is payable
in installments, the vendor may exercise any of the following remedies:
(1) Exact fulfillment of the obligation,
should the vendee fail to pay;
(2) Cancel the sale, should the vendee's
failure to pay cover two or more installments;
(3) Foreclose
the chattel mortgage on the thing sold, if one has been constituted, should
the vendee's failure to pay cover two or more installments. In this case, he shall have
no further action against the purchaser to recover any unpaid balance of the
price. Any agreement to the contrary shall be void. (Emphasis added.)
ART.
1485. The preceding article shall be applied to contracts purporting to be
leases of personal property with option to buy, when the lessor has deprived
the lessee of the possession or enjoyment of the thing.
It is thus GIRAFFE’s posture that the aforequoted
Article 1484 of the Civil Code applies to its contractual relation with PCI
LEASING because the lease agreement in question, as supplemented by the
schedules documents, is really a lease
with option to buy under the companion article, Article 1485. Consequently,
so GIRAFFE argues, upon the seizure of the leased equipment pursuant to the
writ of replevin, which seizure is equivalent to foreclosure, PCI LEASING has
no further recourse against it. In brief, GIRAFFE asserts in its Motion to
Dismiss that the civil complaint filed by PCI LEASING is proscribed by the
application to the case of Articles 1484 and 1485, supra, of the Civil Code.
In its Opposition
to the motion to dismiss, PCI LEASING maintains that its contract with GIRAFFE
is a straight lease without an option to
buy. Prescinding therefrom, PCI
LEASING rejects the applicability to the suit of Article
1484 in relation to Article 1485 of the
Civil Code, claiming
that, under the terms and conditions
of the basic agreement, the relationship between the parties is one between an
ordinary lessor and an ordinary lessee.
In a decision[7]
dated December 28, 1998, the trial court granted GIRAFFE’s motion to dismiss
mainly on the interplay of the following premises: 1) the lease agreement package,
as memorialized in the contract documents, is akin to the contract contemplated
in Article 1485 of the Civil Code, and 2) GIRAFFE’s loss of possession of the
leased equipment consequent to the enforcement of the writ of replevin is “akin
to foreclosure, … the condition precedent for application of Articles 1484 and
1485 [of the Civil Code].” Accordingly,
the trial court dismissed Civil Case No. Q-98-34266, disposing as follows:
WHEREFORE,
premises considered, the defendant [GIRAFFE] having relinquished any claim to
the personal properties subject of replevin which are now in the possession of
the plaintiff [PCI LEASING], plaintiff
is DEEMED fully satisfied pursuant to the provisions of Articles 1484 and 1485
of the New Civil Code. By virtue of said provisions, plaintiff is DEEMED
estopped from further action against the defendant, the plaintiff having
recovered thru (replevin) the personal property sought to be payable/leased on
installments, defendants being under protection of said RECTO LAW. In view
thereof, this case is hereby DISMISSED.
With its motion for reconsideration having been denied
by the trial court in its resolution of February 15, 2000,[8]
petitioner has directly come to this Court via
this petition for review raising the sole legal issue of whether or not the underlying
Lease Agreement, Lease Schedules and the Disclosure Statements that embody the
financial leasing arrangement between the parties are covered by and subject to
the consequences of Articles 1484 and 1485 of the New Civil Code.
As in the court below, petitioner contends that the financial
leasing arrangement it concluded with the respondent represents a straight
lease covered by R.A. No. 5980,
the Financing Company Act, as last
amended by R.A. No. 8556, otherwise
known as Financing Company Act of 1998,
and is outside the application and coverage of the Recto Law. To the petitioner, R.A. No. 5980 defines and authorizes its existence and business.
The recourse is without merit.
R.A. No. 5980, in its
original shape and as amended, partakes of a supervisory or regulatory legislation,
merely providing a regulatory framework for the organization, registration, and
regulation of the operations of financing companies. As couched, it does not
specifically define the rights and obligations of parties to a financial
leasing arrangement. In fact, it does not go beyond defining commercial or
transactional financial leasing and other financial leasing concepts. Thus, the
relevancy of Article 18 of the Civil Code which reads:
Article 18. - In
matters which are governed by … special laws, their deficiency shall be
supplied by the provisions of this [Civil] Code.
Petitioner foists the argument that the Recto Law, i.e., the Civil Code provisions on installment
sales of movable property, does not apply to a financial leasing agreement because
such agreement, by definition, does not confer on the lessee the option to buy
the property subject of the financial lease. To the petitioner, the absence of
an option-to-buy stipulation in a financial leasing agreement, as understood
under R.A. No. 8556, prevents the application thereto of Articles 1484 and 1485
of the Civil Code.
We are not persuaded.
The Court can allow that the underlying lease agreement has the earmarks
or made to appear as a financial leasing,[9] a term defined in Section 3(d) of R.A. No.
8556 as -
a mode of extending credit through a non-cancelable
lease contract under which the lessor purchases or acquires, at the instance of
the lessee, machinery, equipment, … office machines, and other movable or
immovable property in consideration of the periodic payment by the lessee of a
fixed amount of money sufficient to amortize at least seventy (70%) of the
purchase price or acquisition cost, including any incidental expenses and a
margin of profit over an obligatory period of not less than two (2) years during
which the lessee has the right to hold and use the leased property … but with no obligation or option on his part
to purchase the leased property from the owner-lessor at the end of the lease
contract.
In its previous holdings, however, the Court, taking
into account the following mix: the imperatives of equity, the contractual
stipulations in question and the actuations of parties vis-à-vis their contract,
treated disguised transactions technically
tagged as financing lease, like here, as creating a different contractual
relationship. Notable among the Court’s decisions because of its parallelism with
this case is BA Finance Corporation v.
Court of Appeals[10]
which involved a motor vehicle. Thereat, the Court has treated a purported financial
lease as actually a sale of a movable property on installments and prevented
recovery beyond the buyer’s arrearages. Wrote the Court in BA Finance:
The transaction involved … is one of a
"financial lease" or "financial
leasing," where a financing company would, in effect, initially purchase a
mobile equipment and turn around to lease it to a client who gets, in addition,
an option to purchase the property at the expiry of the lease period. xxx.
xxx xxx xxx
The pertinent
provisions of [RA] 5980, thus implemented, read:
"'Financing
companies,' … are primarily organized
for the purpose of extending credit facilities to consumers … either by … leasing of motor vehicles, … and office
machines and equipment, … and other movable property."
"'Credit'
shall mean any loan, … any contract to sell, or sale or contract of sale of
property or service, … under which part or all of the price is payable
subsequent to the making of such sale or contract; any rental-purchase
contract; ….;"
The foregoing
provisions indicate no less than a mere financing scheme extended by a
financing company to a client in acquiring a motor vehicle and allowing the
latter to obtain the immediate possession and use thereof pending full payment
of the financial accommodation that is given.
In the case at
bench, xxx. [T]he term of the contract [over
a motor vehicle] was for thirty six
(36) months at a "monthly rental" … (P1,689.40), or for a total
amount of P60,821.28. The contract also contained [a] clause [requiring the Lessee to give a
guaranty deposit in the amount of P20,800.00] xxx
After the
private respondent had paid the sum of P41,670.59, excluding the guaranty
deposit of P20,800.00, he stopped further payments. Putting the two sums
together, the financing company had in its hands the amount of P62,470.59 as
against the total agreed "rentals" of P60,821.28 or an excess of
P1,649.31.
The respondent
appellate court considered it only just
and equitable for the guaranty deposit made by the private respondent to be
applied to his arrearages and thereafter to hold the contract terminated. Adopting the ratiocination of the
court a quo, the appellate court
said:
xxx In view thereof, the guaranty deposit of
P20,800.00 made by the defendant should and must be credited in his favor,
in the interest of fairness, justice and equity. The plaintiff should not be allowed to unduly enrich itself at the
expense of the defendant. xxx This is even more compelling in this case where
although the transaction, on its face, appear ostensibly, to be a contract of
lease, it is actually a financing agreement, with the plaintiff financing the
purchase of defendant's automobile …. The Court is constrained, in the
interest of truth and justice, to go into this aspect of the transaction
between the plaintiff and the defendant … with all the facts and circumstances existing in this case, and which the court
must consider in deciding the case, if it is to decide the case according to
all the facts. xxx.
xxx xxx xxx
Considering
the factual findings of both the court a
quo and the appellate court, the
only logical conclusion is that the private respondent did opt, as he has
claimed, to acquire the motor vehicle, justifying then the application of the
guarantee deposit to the balance still due and obligating the petitioner to
recognize it as an exercise of the option by the private respondent. The result
would thereby entitle said respondent to the ownership and possession of the
vehicle as the buyer thereof. We, therefore, see no reversible error in the
ultimate judgment of the appellate court.[11]
(Italics in the original; underscoring supplied and words in bracket added.)
In Cebu
Contractors Consortium Co. v. Court of Appeals,[12]
the Court viewed and thus declared a financial lease agreement as having been
simulated to disguise a simple loan with security, it appearing that the
financing company purchased equipment already owned by a capital-strapped
client, with the intention of leasing it back to the latter.
In the present case, petitioner acquired the office equipment
in question for their subsequent lease to the respondent, with the latter
undertaking to pay a monthly fixed rental therefor in the total amount of P292,531.00, or a total of P10,531,116.00 for the whole
36 months. As a measure of good faith, respondent made an up-front guarantee
deposit in the amount of P3,120,000.00. The basic agreement provides that in the event the respondent fails to pay any rental due or is
in a default situation, then the petitioner shall have cumulative
remedies, such as, but not limited to, the following:[13]
1.
Obtain
possession of the property/equipment;
2.
Retain
all amounts paid to it. In addition, the guaranty deposit may be applied
towards the payment of “liquidated damages”;
3.
Recover
all accrued and unpaid rentals;
4.
Recover all rentals for the remaining term of
the lease had it not been cancelled, as additional penalty;
5.
Recovery of any and all amounts advanced by
PCI LEASING for GIRAFFE’s account xxx;
6.
Recover
all expenses incurred in repossessing, removing, repairing and storing the
property; and,
7.
Recover
all damages suffered by PCI LEASING by reason of the default.
In addition, Sec. 6.1 of the Lease Agreement states
that the guaranty deposit shall be forfeited in the event the respondent, for
any reason, returns the equipment before
the expiration of the lease.
At bottom, respondent had paid the equivalent of about
a year’s lease rentals, or a total of P3,510,372.00, more or
less. Throw in the guaranty deposit (P3,120,000.00) and the respondent had made a total cash outlay of P6,630,372.00 in favor
of the petitioner. The replevin-seized leased equipment had, as alleged in the
complaint, an estimated residual value of P6,900.000.00 at the
time Civil Case No. Q-98-34266 was instituted on P13,530,372.00 (P3,510,372.00 + P3,120,000.00 + P6,900.000.00 = P13,530,372.00).
The acquisition cost for both the
Silicon High Impact Graphics equipment and the Oxberry Cinescan was, as stated
in no less than the petitioner’s letter to the respondent dated November 11,
1996[14]
approving in the latter’s favor a lease
facility, was P8,100,000.00. Subtracting
the acquisition cost of P8,100,000.00 from the total amount, i.e., P13,530,372.00,
creditable to the respondent, it would clearly appear that petitioner realized a
gross
income of P5,430,372.00
from its lease transaction with the respondent. The amount of P5,430,372.00
is not yet a final figure as it does not include the rentals in arrears,
penalties thereon, and interest
earned by the guaranty deposit.
As may be noted, petitioner’s demand letter[15]
fixed the amount of P8,248,657.47
as representing the respondent’s “rental” balance which became due and
demandable consequent to the application of the acceleration and other clauses
of the lease agreement. Assuming, then,
that the respondent may be compelled to pay P8,248,657.47, then it would end up paying a total of P21,779,029.47 (P13,530,372.00 + P8,248,657.47 = P21,779,029.47) for its use -
for a year and two months at the most - of the equipment. All in all, for an investment of P8,100,000.00,
the petitioner stands to make in a year’s time, out of the transaction, a total
of P21,779,029.47, or a net of P13,679,029.47,
if we are to believe its outlandish legal submission that the PCI
LEASING-GIRAFFE Lease Agreement was
an honest-to-goodness straight lease.
A financing arrangement has a purpose
which is at once practical and salutary. R.A. No. 8556 was, in fact, precisely
enacted to regulate financing companies’ operations with the end in view of
strengthening their critical role in providing credit and services to small and
medium enterprises and to curtail acts
and practices prejudicial to the public interest, in general, and to their
clienteles, in particular.[16] As a regulated activity,
financing arrangements are not meant to quench only the thirst for profit. They
serve a higher purpose, and R.A. No. 8556 has made that abundantly clear.
We stress, however, that there is nothing
in R.A. No. 8556 which defines the rights and obligations, as between each
other, of the financial lessor and the lessee. In determining the respective
responsibilities of the parties to the agreement, courts, therefore, must train
a keen eye on the attendant facts and circumstances of the case in order to ascertain
the intention of the parties, in relation to the law and the written agreement.
Likewise, the public interest and policy involved should be considered. It may
not be amiss to state that, normally, financing contracts come in a standard
prepared form, unilaterally thought up and written by the financing companies
requiring only the personal circumstances and signature of the borrower or
lessee; the rates and other important covenants in these agreements are still
largely imposed unilaterally by the financing companies. In other words, these
agreements are usually one-sided in favor of such companies. A perusal of the
lease agreement in question exposes the many remedies available to the petitioner, while there are only the standard contractual prohibitions
against the respondent. This is characteristic of standard printed form
contracts.
There is more. In the adverted P8,248,657.47, representing
the unpaid balance for the entire 36-month lease period or the surrender of the financed
asset under pain of legal action. To quote the letter:
Demand
is hereby made upon you to pay in full your outstanding balance in the amount
of P8,248,657.47 on or before March 04, 1998 OR to surrender to us the one (1) set Silicon High Impact
Graphics and one (1) unit Oxberry Cinescan 6400-10…
We
trust you will give this matter your serious and preferential attention.
(Emphasis added).
Evidently, the letter did not make a demand for the
payment of the P8,248,657.47
AND
the return of the equipment; only either one of the two was required. The
demand letter was prepared and signed by Atty. Florecita R. Gonzales,
presumably petitioner’s counsel. As such, the use of “or” instead of “and” in
the letter could hardly be treated as a simple typographical error, bearing in
mind the nature of the demand, the amount involved, and the fact that it was
made by a lawyer. Certainly Atty. Gonzales would have known that a world of
difference exists between “and” and “or” in the manner that the word was
employed in the letter.
A
rule in statutory construction is that the word "or" is a disjunctive
term signifying dissociation and independence of one thing from other things
enumerated unless the context requires a different interpretation.[18]
In
its elementary sense, "or", as used in a statute, is a disjunctive
article indicating an alternative. It often connects a series of words or
propositions indicating a choice of either. When "or" is used, the
various members of the enumeration are to be taken separately.[19]
The
word "or" is a disjunctive term signifying disassociation and
independence of one thing from each of the other things enumerated.[20]
The demand could only be that the respondent need not
return the equipment if it paid the P8,248,657.47 outstanding balance, ineluctably
suggesting that the respondent can keep possession of the equipment if it
exercises its option to acquire the same by paying the unpaid balance of the
purchase price. Stated otherwise, if the respondent was not minded to exercise
its option of acquiring the equipment by returning them, then it need not pay
the outstanding balance. This is the logical import of the letter: that the
transaction in this case is a lease in name only. The so-called monthly rentals
are in truth monthly amortizations of the price of the leased office equipment.
On the whole, then, we rule, as did the trial court,
that the PCI LEASING- GIRAFFE lease agreement is in reality a lease with an
option to purchase the equipment. This has
been made manifest by the actions of the petitioner itself, foremost of which
is the declarations made in its demand letter to the respondent. There could be
no other explanation than that if the respondent paid the balance, then it
could keep the equipment for its own; if not, then it should return them. This
is clearly an option to purchase given to the respondent. Being so, Article
1485 of the Civil Code should apply.
The present case reflects a situation
where the financing company can withhold and conceal - up to the last moment -
its intention to sell the property subject of the finance lease, in order that
the provisions of the Recto Law may
be circumvented. It may be, as petitioner pointed out, that the basic “lease
agreement” does not contain a “purchase option” clause. The absence, however,
does not necessarily argue against the idea that what the parties are into is not a straight lease, but a lease with option
to purchase. This Court has, to be sure, long been aware of the practice of
vendors of personal property of denominating a contract of sale on installment
as one of lease to prevent the ownership of the object of the sale from passing
to the vendee until and unless the price is fully paid. As this Court noted in Vda. de Jose v. Barrueco:[21]
Sellers desirous of making conditional
sales of their goods, but who do not wish openly to make a bargain in that
form, for one reason or another, have frequently resorted to the device of making contracts in the form of
leases either with options to the buyer to purchase for a small consideration
at the end of term, provided the so-called rent has been duly paid, or with
stipulations that if the rent throughout the term is paid, title shall
thereupon vest in the lessee. It is obvious that such transactions are leases
only in name. The so-called rent must necessarily be regarded as payment of
the price in installments since the due payment of the agreed amount results,
by the terms of the bargain, in the transfer of title to the lessee.
In another
old but still relevant case of
. . . There can hardly be any question
that the so-called contracts of lease on which the present action is based were
veritable leases of personal property with option to purchase, and as such come
within the purview of the above article [Art. 1454-A of the old Civil Code on
sale of personal property by installment]. xxx
Being leases of personal property with
option to purchase as contemplated in the above article, the contracts in
question are subject to the provision that when the lessor in such case “has
chosen to deprive the lessee of the enjoyment of such personal property,” “he
shall have no further action” against the lessee “for the recovery of any
unpaid balance” owing by the latter, “agreement to the contrary being null and
void.”
In
choosing, through replevin, to deprive the respondent of possession of the
leased equipment, the petitioner waived its right to bring an action to recover
unpaid rentals on the said leased items. Paragraph (3), Article 1484 in relation to Article 1485 of the Civil Code,
which we are hereunder re-reproducing, cannot be any clearer.
ART.
1484. In a contract of sale of personal property the price of which is payable
in installments, the vendor may exercise any of the following remedies:
xxx xxx xxx
(3) Foreclose the chattel mortgage on the
thing sold, if one has been constituted,
should the vendee's failure to pay cover two or more installments. In this case, he shall have no further action against the
purchaser to recover any unpaid balance of the price. Any agreement to the contrary shall be void.
ART.
1485. The preceding article shall be applied to contracts purporting to be
leases of personal property with option to buy, when the lessor has deprived
the lessee of the possession or enjoyment of the thing.
As we
articulated in Elisco Tool Manufacturing
Corp. v. Court of Appeals,[23]
the remedies provided for in Article 1484 of the Civil Code are alternative,
not cumulative. The exercise of one bars the exercise of the others. This
limitation applies to contracts purporting to be leases of personal property
with option to buy by virtue of the same Article 1485. The condition that the
lessor has deprived the lessee of possession or enjoyment of the thing for the
purpose of applying Article 1485 was fulfilled in this case by the filing by
petitioner of the complaint for a sum of money with prayer for replevin to
recover possession of the office equipment.[24]
By virtue of the writ of seizure issued by the trial court, the petitioner has
effectively deprived respondent of their use, a situation which, by force of the Recto Law, in turn precludes the former from maintaining an action
for recovery of “accrued rentals” or the recovery of the balance of the
purchase price plus interest. [25]
The imperatives of honest dealings given prominence in the Civil Code
under the heading: Human Relations,
provide another reason why we must hold the petitioner to its word as embodied
in its demand letter. Else, we would witness a situation where even if the respondent surrendered
the equipment voluntarily, the petitioner can still sue upon its claim. This
would be most unfair for the respondent. We cannot allow the petitioner to renege
on its word. Yet more than that, the very word “or” as used in the letter
conveys distinctly its intention not
to claim both the unpaid balance and the equipment. It is not difficult to
discern why: if we add up the amounts paid by the respondent, the residual
value of the property recovered, and the amount claimed by the petitioner as
sued upon herein (for a total of P21,779,029.47),
then it would end up making an instant killing out of the transaction at the
expense of its client, the respondent. The Recto
Law was precisely enacted to prevent this kind of aberration. Moreover, due
to considerations of equity, public policy
and justice, we cannot allow this to
happen.
Not only to the respondent, but those similarly situated who may fall prey to a
similar scheme.
WHEREFORE, the
instant petition is DENIED and the
trial court’s decision is AFFIRMED.
Costs against petitioner.
SO ORDERED.
CANCIO C. GARCIA
Associate
Justice
WE CONCUR:
REYNATO S. PUNO
Chief Justice
Chairperson
(On leave)
|
ANGELINA SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ Associate Justice |
RENATO C. CORONA Associate Justice |
ADOLFO S. AZCUNA
Associate Justice
C
E R T I F I C A T I O N
Pursuant to Section 13, Article VIII of the Constitution, I certify that
the conclusions in the above decision had been reached in consultation before
the case was assigned to the writer of the opinion of the Court’s Division.
REYNATO S. PUNO
Chief Justice
* On leave.
[1] Annex “C,” Petition; rollo, pp. 30-31.
[2] Annexes “D” and “E,” Petition; id. at 32-33.
[3] Annexes “F” and “G,” Petition; id. at 35-36.
[4] RTC Records, p. 14.
[5] Rollo, pp. 37-41.
[6] Then presided by Judge (now Court of Appeals Associate Justice) Vicente Roxas.
[7] Rollo, pp. 24-27.
[8]
[9] Used interchangeably with the terms “financing lease” and “financial lease.”
[11] BA Finance Corporation v. Court of Appeals,
G.R. No. 105190,
[12] G.R.
No. 107199,
[13] Secs. 19.2 and 20.1 of the Lease Agreement.
[14] Rollo, p. 82.
[15] Supra note 4.
[16] Sec. 2, R.A. No. 8556.
[17] Supra note 4.
[18] Pimentel v. COMELEC, G.R. No. 126394,
[19] Centeno v. Villalon-Pornillos, G.R. No.
113092,
[20] Castillo-Co v. Barbers, G.R. No. 129952,
[21] 67 Phil. 191 (1939) cited in Elisco Tool Manufacturing Corp. v. CA, G.R. No. 109966, May 31, 1999, 307 SCRA 731.
[22] 93 Phil. 271 (1953).
[23] G.R. No. 109966,
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.