MARY
ANN RODRIGUEZ Vs. PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES and GLADYS NOCOM, G.R. Nos. 155531-34, July 29, 2005
“x x x.
Settled is
the rule that the single act of issuing a bouncing check may give rise to two
distinct criminal offenses: estafa and violation of Batas Pambansa Bilang 22
(BP 22).
The Rules of Court allow the offended party to intervene via
a private prosecutor in each of these two penal proceedings.
However, the recovery of the single civil liability arising
from the single act of issuing a bouncing check in either
criminal case bars the recovery of the same civil liability in the other
criminal action.
While the law allows two simultaneous civil remedies for the
offended party, it authorizes recovery in only one.
In short, while two crimes arise from a single set of facts,
only one civil liability attaches to it.
X x x.
Sole Issue:
Civil Action in BP 22
Case Not a Bar
to Civil Action in Estafa Case
Petitioner theorizes
that the civil action necessarily arising from the criminal case pending before
the MTC for violation of BP 22 precludes the institution of the corresponding
civil action in the criminal case for estafa now pending before the RTC. She hinges
her theory on the following provisions of Rules 110 and 111 of the Rules of
Court:
SECTION 16. Intervention of the offended party in criminal action. -- Where the civil action for
recovery of civil liability is instituted in the criminal action pursuant to
Rule 111, the offended party may intervene by counsel in the prosecution of the
offense.
SECTION 1. Institution of criminal and civil actions. -- (a) When a criminal action is
instituted, the civil action for the recovery of civil liability arising from
the offense charged shall be deemed instituted with the criminal action unless
the offended party waives the civil action, reserves the right to institute it
separately or institutes the civil action prior to the criminal action.
The reservation of the right to institute separately the civil
action shall be made before the prosecution starts presenting its evidence and
under circumstances affording the offended party a reasonable opportunity to
make such reservation.
When the offended party seeks to enforce civil liability against
the accused by way of moral, nominal, temperate, or exemplary damages without
specifying the amount thereof in the complaint or information, the filing fees
therefor shall constitute a first lien on the judgment awarding such damages.
x x x x x x x x x
(b) The criminal action for violation of Batas Pambansa Blg. 22
shall be deemed to include the corresponding civil action. No reservation to
file such civil action separately shall be allowed.
Upon filing of the aforesaid joint criminal and civil actions, the
offended party shall pay in full the filing fees based on the amount of the
check involved, which shall be considered as the actual damages claimed. Where
the complaint or information also seeks to recover liquidated, moral, nominal,
temperate or exemplary damages, the offended party shall pay the filing fees
based on the amounts alleged therein. If the amounts are not so alleged but any
of these damages are subsequently awarded by the court, the filing fees based
on the amount awarded shall constitute a first lien on the judgment.
Where the civil action has been filed separately and trial thereof
has not yet commenced, it may be consolidated with the criminal action upon
application with the court trying the latter case. If the application is
granted, the trial of both actions shall proceed in accordance with section 2
of this Rule governing consolidation of the civil and criminal actions.
Based
on the foregoing rules, an offended party may intervene in the prosecution of a
crime, except in the following instances: (1) when, from the nature of
the crime and the law defining and punishing it, no civil liability arises in
favor of a private offended party; and (2) when, from the nature of the
offense, the offended parties are (not) entitled to civil indemnity, but (a)
they waive the right to institute a civil action, (b) expressly reserve the
right to do so or (c) the suit has already been instituted. In any of these
instances, the private complainants interest in the case disappears and
criminal prosecution becomes the sole function of the public prosecutor.[8] None
of these exceptions apply to the instant case. Hence, the private prosecutor
cannot be barred from intervening in the estafa suit.
True,
each of the overt acts in these instances may give rise to two criminal
liabilities -- one for estafa and another for violation of BP 22. But every
such act of issuing a bouncing check involves only one civil liability for the
offended party, who has sustained only a single injury.[9] This
is the import of Banal v. Tadeo,[10] which
we quote in part as follows:
Generally, the basis of civil liability
arising from crime is the fundamental postulate of our law that Every man
criminally liable is also civilly liable (Art. 100, The Revised Penal Code).
Underlying this legal principle is the traditional theory that when a person
commits a crime he offends two entities namely (1) the society in which he
lives in or the political entity called the State whose law he had violated;
and (2) the individual member of that society whose person, right, honor,
chastity or property was actually or directly injured or damaged by the same
punishable act or omission. However, this rather broad and general provision is
among the most complex and controversial topics in criminal procedure. It can
be misleading in its implications especially where the same act or omission may
be treated as a crime in one instance and as a tort in another or where the law
allows a separate civil action to proceed independently of the course of the
criminal prosecution with which it is intimately intertwined. Many legal
scholars treat as a misconception or fallacy the generally accepted notion that
the civil liability actually arises from the crime when, in the ultimate
analysis, it does not. While an act or omission is felonious because it is
punishable by law, it gives rise to civil liability not so much because it is a
crime but because it caused damage to another. Viewing things pragmatically, we
can readily see that what gives rise to the civil liability is really the
obligation and the moral duty of everyone to repair or make whole the damage
caused to another by reason of his own act or omission, done intentionally or
negligently, whether or not the same be punishable by law. In other words,
criminal liability will give rise to civil liability only if the same felonious
act or omission results in damage or injury to another and is the direct and
proximate cause thereof. Damage or injury to another is evidently the
foundation of the civil action. Such is not the case in criminal actions for,
to be criminally liable, it is enough that the act or omission complained of is
punishable, regardless of whether or not it also causes material damage to
another. (See Sangco, Philippine Law on Torts and Damages, 1978, Revised
Edition, pp. 246-247).
Thus,
the possible single civil liability arising from the act of issuing a bouncing
check can be the subject of both civil actions deemed instituted with the
estafa case and the BP 22 violation prosecution. In the crimes of both estafa
and violation of BP 22, Rule 111 of the Rules of Court expressly allows, even
automatically in the present case, the institution of a civil action without need of
election by the offended party. As both remedies are simultaneously available
to this party, there can be no forum shopping.[11]
Hence, this Court
cannot agree with what petitioner ultimately espouses. At the present stage, no
judgment on the civil liability has been rendered in either criminal case.
There is as yet no call for the offended party to elect remedies and, after
choosing one of them, be considered barred from others available to her.
Election of Remedies
Petitioner is
actually raising the doctrine of election of remedies. In its broad sense,
election of remedies refers to the choice by a party to an action of one of two
or more coexisting remedial rights, where several such rights arise out of the
same facts, but the term has been generally limited to a choice by a party
between inconsistent remedial rights, the assertion of one being necessarily
repugnant to, or a repudiation of, the other.[12] In
its more restricted and technical sense, the election of remedies is the
adoption of one of two or more coexisting ones, with the effect of precluding a
resort to the others.[13]
As a technical rule of procedure, the purpose of the doctrine of
election of remedies is not to prevent recourse to any remedy, but to prevent
double redress for a single wrong.[15] It
is regarded as an application of the law of estoppel, upon the theory that a
party cannot, in the assertion of his right occupy inconsistent positions which
form the basis of his respective remedies. However, when a certain state of
facts under the law entitles a party to alternative remedies, both founded upon
the identical state of facts, these remedies are not considered inconsistent
remedies. In such case, the invocation of one remedy is not an election which
will bar the other, unless the suit upon the remedy first invoked shall reach
the stage of final adjudication or unless by the invocation of the remedy first
sought to be enforced, the plaintiff shall have gained an advantage thereby or
caused detriment or change of situation to the other.[16] It
must be pointed out that ordinarily, election of remedies is not made until the
judicial proceedings has gone to judgment on the merits.[17]
Consonant with these rulings, this Court, through Justice J.B.L.
Reyes, opined that while some American authorities hold that the mere initiation
of proceedings constitutes a binding choice of remedies that precludes pursuit
of alternative courses, the better rule is that no binding election
occurs before a decision on the merits is had or a detriment to the other party
supervenes.[18] This
is because the principle of election of remedies is discordant with the modern
procedural concepts embodied in the Code of Civil Procedure which permits a
party to seek inconsistent remedies in his claim for relief without being
required to elect between them at the pleading stage of the litigation.[19]
In
the present cases before us, the institution of the civil actions with the
estafa cases and the inclusion of another set of civil actions with the BP 22
cases are not exactly repugnant or inconsistent with each other. Nothing in the
Rules signifies that the necessary inclusion of a civil action in a criminal
case for violation of the Bouncing Checks Law[20] precludes
the institution in an estafa case of the corresponding civil action, even if
both offenses relate to the issuance of the same check.
The
purpose of Section 1(b) of Rule 111 is explained by Justice Florenz D. Regalado
(ret.), former chairman of the committee tasked with the revision of the Rules
of Criminal Procedure. He clarified that the special rule on BP 22 cases was
added, because the dockets of the courts were clogged with such litigations;
creditors were using the courts as collectors. While ordinarily no filing fees
were charged for actual damages in criminal cases, the rule on the necessary
inclusion of a civil action with the payment of filing fees based on the face
value of the check involved was laid down to prevent the practice of creditors of using the threat of
a criminal prosecution to collect on their credit free of charge.[21]
Clearly, it was not
the intent of the special rule to preclude the prosecution of the civil action
that corresponds to the estafa case, should the latter also be filed. The
crimes of estafa and violation of BP 22 are different and distinct from each
other. There is no identity of offenses involved, for which legal jeopardy in
one case may be invoked in the other. The offenses charged in the informations
are perfectly distinct from each other in point of law, however nearly they may
be connected in point of fact.[22]
What Section 1(b) of
the Rules of Court prohibits is the reservation to file the
corresponding civil action. The criminal action shall be deemed to include the
corresponding civil action. [U]nless a separate civil action has been
filed before the institution of the criminal action, no such civil
action can be instituted after the criminal action has been filed as the same
has been included therein.[23] In
the instant case, the criminal action for estafa was admittedly filed prior to
the criminal case for violation of BP 22, with the corresponding filing fees
for the inclusion of the corresponding civil action paid accordingly.[24]
Furthermore, the fact
that the Rules do not allow the reservation of civil actions in BP 22 cases
cannot deprive private complainant of the right to protect her interests in the
criminal action for estafa. Nothing in the current law or rules on BP 22 vests
the jurisdiction of the corresponding civil case exclusively in the court
trying the BP 22 criminal case.[25]
In promulgating the
Rules, this Court did not intend to leave the offended parties without any
remedy to protect their interests in estafa cases. Its power to promulgate the
Rules of Court is limited in the sense that rules shall not diminish, increase
or modify substantive rights.[26] Private
complainants intervention in the prosecution of estafa is justified not only
for the prosecution of her interests, but also for the speedy and inexpensive
administration of justice as mandated by the Constitution.[27]
The trial court was,
therefore, correct in holding that the private prosecutor may intervene before
the RTC in the proceedings for estafa, despite the necessary inclusion of the
corresponding civil action in the proceedings for violation of BP 22 pending
before the MTC. A recovery by the offended party under one remedy, however,
necessarily bars that under the other. Obviously stemming from the fundamental
rule against unjust enrichment,[28] this
is in essence the rationale for the proscription in our law against double
recovery for the same act or omission.
X x x.”
[6] The case was deemed submitted for decision on May 28, 2004, upon
receipt by this Court of Petitioners Memorandum signed by Atty. Redemberto R.
Villanueva. Respondents Manifestation and Motion For Leave to Adopt Comment as
Memorandum, signed by Assistant Solicitor General Fernanda Lampas Peralta and
Associate Solicitor Josephine de Sagon Mejia, was received by the Court on
August 20, 2003.
[13] Id., citing People v. Court of Appeals, No. 54641, November 28, 1980, 101 SCRA 450, 463- 464 citing Whitney v. Vermon [Tex. Civ. A] 154,
264, 267 and Southern R. Co. v. Attalla, 147 Ala. 653, 41 S.
664.
[17] Colonial Leasing Co. of New England, Inc. v. Tracy, 557 P. 2d 639, 276 Or. 1193; Johnson v. Daves Auto
Center, 257 Or. 34, 476 P. 2d 190.
Section 20. Other Fees. - The following fees shall also be
collected by the clerks of Regional Trial Courts or courts of the first level,
as the case may be:
(a) In estafa cases where the offended party fails
to manifest within fifteen (15) days following the filing of the information
that the civil liability arising from the crime has been or would be separately
prosecuted[.]
[25] Unlike in Section 4 of Presidential
Decree No. 1606 (Revising Presidential Decree No. 1486 Creating A Special Court
to Be Known as Sandiganbayan and For Other Purposes, December 10, 1978), as
amended, which provides:
Any provision of law or Rules of Court to the
contrary notwithstanding, the criminal action and the corresponding civil
action for the recovery of civil liability shall at all times be simultaneously
instituted with, and jointly determined in, the same proceeding by the
Sandiganbayan or the appropriate courts, the filing of the criminal action
being deemed to necessarily carry with it the filing of the civil action, and
no right to reserve the filing of such civil action separately from the
criminal action shall be recognized: Provided, however, That where the civil action had heretofore been filed separately
but judgment therein has not yet been rendered, and the criminal case is
hereafter filed with the Sandiganbayan or the appropriate court, said civil
action shall be transferred to the Sandiganbayan or the appropriate court, as
the case may be, for consolidation and joint determination with the criminal
action, otherwise the separate action shall be deemed abandoned.
[26] See Abellana v. Marave, 156 Phil. 79, May 29, 1974. Section 5 of Article VIII of the 1987
Constitution provides:
Sec. 5. The Supreme Court shall have the following powers:
x x x x x x x x x
(5) Promulgate rules concerning the protection
and enforcement of constitutional rights, pleading, practice, and procedure in
all courts, the admission to the practice of law, the Integrated Bar, and legal
assistance to the underprivileged. Such rules shall provide a simplified and
inexpensive procedure for the speedy disposition of cases, shall be uniform for
all courts of the same grade, and shall not diminish, increase, or modify
substantive rights. Rules of procedure of special courts and quasi-judicial
bodies shall remain effective unless disapproved by the Supreme Court.
