REPUBLIC vs. CFI MANILA and MAYER STEEL PIPE CORP.

Citation:  G.R. No. 43747; September 2, 1992; Ponente:  Nocon

Doctrine:  Application of the Doctrine of Primary Jurisdiction – The question of forfeiture of the properties sought to be imported is for the Collector of Customs to determine and then by the Commissioner of Customs.  Thereafter, appeals must be brought to the Court of Tax Appeals.

FACTS:

In November 13, 1975, the CFI of Manila issued an injunction enjoining the Collector of Customs (Collector) from enforcing an order to seize some packages of machinery from the Private Respondent, Mayer Steel Pipe Corporation. 

The complaint with the CFI alleged the lack of due process in the proceedings leading to the order.

ISSUE:

Whether or not the CFI has the jurisdiction to issue an injunction over the order of the Collector.

HELD:

The mandate of the law is very specific.  Section 2312 of the Tariff and Customs Code provides:

"SEC. 2312. Decision or Action by Collector in Protest And Seizure Cases. — When a protest in proper form is presented in a case where protest is required, the Collector shall issue an order for hearing within fifteen (15) days from receipt of the protest and hear the matter thus presented. Upon the termination of the hearing, the Collector shall render a decision within thirty (30) days, and if the protest is sustained, in whole or in part, he shall make the appropriate order, the entry reliquidated if necessary."

On the other hand, Section 2313 of the same law states:

Review by Commissioner. — The person aggrieved by the decision or action of the Collector in any matter presented upon protest or by his action in any case of seizure may, within fifteen (15) days after notification in writing by the Collector of his action or decision, give written notice to the Collector and one copy furnished to the Commissioner of his desire to have the matter reviewed by the Commissioner. Thereupon the Collector shall forthwith transmit all the records of the proceedings to the Commissioner, who shall approve, modify or reverse the action or decision of the collector and take such steps and make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to his decision.

Section 7 of R.A. No. 1125 (An Act Creating the Court of Tax Appeals) also provides:

Jurisdiction — The Court of Tax Appeals shall exercise exclusive appellate jurisdiction to review by appeal, as herein provided —

x       x       x

(2) Decisions of the Commissioner of Customs in cases involving liability for customs duties, fees or other money charges; seizure, detention or release of property affected: fines forfeitures or other penalties imposed in relation thereto; or other matters arising under the Customs Law or other law or part of the law administered by the Bureau of Customs.

Clearly then, the question of seizure and forfeiture is for the Collector of Customs to determine in the first instance and then the Commissioner of Customs. This is a field where the doctrine of primary jurisdiction controls. Thereafter an appeal may be taken to the Court of Tax Appeals. A court of first instance is thus devoid of competence to act on the matter.

Lastly, in the case of Enrile vs. Vinuya, it was held that “the prevailing doctrine is that the exclusive jurisdiction in seizure and forfeiture cases vested in the Collector of Customs precludes a court of first instance from assuming cognizance over such a matter.”

As regards to the allegation that there was violation of due process, the Court noted that there was a hearing with 6 witnesses and for the purposes of administrative proceedings.

Wherefore, the order of injunction issued by the CFI of Manila was annulled.

FUJIKI vs. MARINAY

Citation:  G.R. No. 196049, June 26, 2013

Ponente:  Carpio; SECOND DIVISION

Doctrine: 

Recognition of foreign judgment declaring nullity of marriage – A recognition of a foreign judgment is not an action to nullify a marriage. It is an action for Philippine courts to recognize the effectivity of a foreign judgment, which presupposes a case which was already tried and decided under foreign law.  Article 26 of the Family Code further confers jurisdiction on Philippine courts to extend the effect of a foreign divorce decree to a Filipino spouse without undergoing trial to determine the validity of the dissolution of the marriage. The second paragraph of Article 26 of the Family Code provides that “[w]here a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”

FACTS:

Petitioner Minoru Fujiki (Fujiki), a Japanese national married respondent Maria Paz Galela Marinay (Marinay) in the Philippines on January 23, 2004.  Sadly, petitioner Fujiki could not bring respondent Marinay back to Japan and they eventually lost contact with one another.  In 2008, Marinay met Shinichi Maekara and they married without the earlier marriage being dissolved.

Marinay suffered abuse from Maekara and so she left him and was able to reestablish contact with Fujiki and rekindle their relationship.  The couple was able to obtain a judgment in a Japanese court that declared Marinay's marriage to Maekara void on the ground of bigamy in 2010.  Fujiki then filed a petition in the RTC entitled:  “Judicial Recognition of Foreign Judgment (or Decree of Absolute Nullity of Marriage)”.  In this case, petitioner prayed that:

(1) the Japanese Family Court judgment be recognized; (2) that the bigamous marriage between Marinay and Maekara be declared void ab initio under Articles 35(4) and 41 of the Family Code of the Philippines; and (3) for the RTC to direct the Local Civil Registrar of Quezon City to annotate the Japanese Family Court judgment on the Certificate of Marriage between Marinay and Maekara and to endorse such annotation to the Office of the Administrator and Civil Registrar General in the National Statistics Office (NSO).

The trial court dismissed the petition on the ground that it did not meet standing and venue requirements as prescribed on the Rule on Rule on Declaration of Absolute Nullity of Void Marriages and Annulment of Voidable Marriages (A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC), specifically, only the spouses (i.e. Marimay or Maekara) may file an action for declaration of nullity of marriage.  Petitioner in a Motion for Reconsideration claimed that the case should not be dismissed as the above rule applied only to cases of annulment of marriage on the ground of psychological incapacity and not in a petition for recognition of a foreign judgment.  Notably, when the Solicitor General was asked for comment, it agreed with the Petitioner stating that the above rule should not apply to cases of bigamy and that insofar as the Civil Registrar and the NSO are concerned, Rule 108 of the Rules of Court provide the procedure to be followed.  Lastly, the Solicitor General argued that there is no jurisdictional infirmity in assailing a void marriage under Rule 108, citing De Castro v. De Castro and Niñal v. Bayadog which declared that “[t]he validity of a void marriage may be collaterally attacked.”

ISSUE:

Whether or not a husband or wife of a prior marriage can file a petition to recognize a foreign judgment nullifying the subsequent marriage between his or her spouse and a foreign citizen on the ground of bigamy.

HELD:

YES.  Firstly, the Rule on Declaration of Absolute Nullity of Void Marriages and Annulment of Voidable Marriages (A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC) does not apply in a petition to recognize a foreign judgment relating to the status of a marriage where one of the parties is a citizen of a foreign country.  Moreover, in Juliano-Llave v. Republic, this Court held that the rule in A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC that only the husband or wife can file a declaration of nullity or annulment of marriage “does not apply if the reason behind the petition is bigamy.”

The Supreme Court further held that:

For Philippine courts to recognize a foreign judgment relating to the status of a marriage where one of the parties is a citizen of a foreign country, the petitioner only needs to prove the foreign judgment as a fact under the Rules of Court. To be more specific, a copy of the foreign judgment may be admitted in evidence and proven as a fact under Rule 132, Sections 24 and 25, in relation to Rule 39, Section 48(b) of the Rules of Court. Petitioner may prove the Japanese Family Court judgment through (1) an official publication or (2) a certification or copy attested by the officer who has custody of the judgment. If the office which has custody is in a foreign country such as Japan, the certification may be made by the proper diplomatic or consular officer of the Philippine foreign service in Japan and authenticated by the seal of office.

x x x

A petition to recognize a foreign judgment declaring a marriage void does not require relitigation under a Philippine court of the case as if it were a new petition for declaration of nullity of marriage. Philippine courts cannot presume to know the foreign laws under which the foreign judgment was rendered. They cannot substitute their judgment on the status, condition and legal capacity of the foreign citizen who is under the jurisdiction of another state. Thus, Philippine courts can only recognize the foreign judgment as a fact according to the rules of evidence.

x x x

There is therefore no reason to disallow Fujiki to simply prove as a fact the Japanese Family Court judgment nullifying the marriage between Marinay and Maekara on the ground of bigamy. While the Philippines has no divorce law, the Japanese Family Court judgment is fully consistent with Philippine public policy, as bigamous marriages are declared void from the beginning under Article 35(4) of the Family Code. Bigamy is a crime under Article 349 of the Revised Penal Code. Thus, Fujiki can prove the existence of the Japanese Family Court judgment in accordance with Rule 132, Sections 24 and 25, in relation to Rule 39, Section 48(b) of the Rules of Court.

A recognition of a foreign judgment is not an action to nullify a marriage. It is an action for Philippine courts to recognize the effectivity of a foreign judgment, which presupposes a case which was already tried and decided under foreign law.  Article 26 of the Family Code further confers jurisdiction on Philippine courts to extend the effect of a foreign divorce decree to a Filipino spouse without undergoing trial to determine the validity of the dissolution of the marriage. The second paragraph of Article 26 of the Family Code provides that “[w]here a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”

Petition was granted and the RTC was ordered to reinstate the proceedings.

RONULO vs. PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES

Citation:  G.R. No. 182438, July 02, 2014

Ponente:  Brion, SECOND DIVISION

FACTS:

On March 29, 2003, Joey Umadac and Claire Bingayen were scheduled to marry one another.  On the day of the wedding, at the Roman Catholic Church of San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte, the priest refused to marry them when he learned that the couple did not have a marriage license. Instead, the couple, already dressed in their wedding attire and with their parents and friends, proceeded to the Aglipayan church and requested Petitioner, an Aglipayan Priest to marry them to which he proceeded to marry the couple. 

An information for violation of Article 352 of the RPC, was filed against the petitioner before the MTC of Batac, Ilocos Norte for allegedly performing an illegal marriage ceremony.

The petitioner pleaded “not guilty” and while he admitted that he conducted a ceremony, denied that his act of “blessing” the couple was tantamount to a solemnization of the marriage as contemplated by law.

The MTC found petitioner guilty of violating Art. 352 of the Revised Penal Code for conducting an illegal marriage ceremony.  The RTC affirmed as did the Court of Appeals.

ISSUE:

Whether or not petitioner conducted a “blessing” and not an [illegal] marriage ceremony.

HELD:

Petitioner conducted an illegal marriage ceremony.  The crime as provided for in Art 352 of the RPC refers to the performance of marriages under Articles 3 and 6 of the Family Code which reads:

Art. 3. The formal requisites of marriage are:

x x x

(3) A marriage ceremony which takes place with the appearance of the contracting parties before the solemnizing officer and their personal declaration that they take each other as husband and wife in the presence of not less than two witnesses of legal age.

x x x

Art. 6. No prescribed form or religious rite for the solemnization of the marriage is required. It shall be necessary, however, for the contracting parties to appear personally before the solemnizing officer and declare in the presence of not less than two witnesses of legal age that they take each other as husband and wife. This declaration shall be contained in the marriage certificate which shall be signed by the contracting parties and their witnesses and attested by the solemnizing officer.

. . .

 The Supreme Court explained that what made the petitioner's act a marriage ceremony and not just a mere blessing was that while there is no prescribed form or religious rite, all that was required was “for the contracting parties to appear personally before the solemnizing officer and declare in the presence of not less than two witnesses of legal age that they take each other as husband and wife.”

As to the first requirement, the petitioner admitted that the parties appeared before him and this fact was testified to by witnesses. On the second requirement, we find that, contrary to the petitioner’s allegation, the prosecution has proven, through the testimony of witnesses, that the contracting parties personally declared that they take each other as husband and wife.  Thus, it is clear that petitioner conducted a marriage ceremony and not a mere blessing.

The marriage ceremony was also illegal.  The Supreme Court stated that:

Under Article 3(3) of the Family Code, one of the essential requisites of marriage is the presence of a valid marriage certificate. In the present case, the petitioner admitted that he knew that the couple had no marriage license, yet he conducted the “blessing” of their relationship.

Undoubtedly, the petitioner conducted the marriage ceremony despite knowledge that the essential and formal requirements of marriage set by law were lacking. The marriage ceremony, therefore, was illegal. The petitioner’s knowledge of the absence of these requirements negates his defense of good faith.

We also do not agree with the petitioner that the lack of a marriage certificate negates his criminal liability in the present case. For purposes of determining if a marriage ceremony has been conducted, a marriage certificate is not included in the requirements provided by Article 3(3) of the Family Code, as discussed above.

Neither does the non-filing of a criminal complaint against the couple negate criminal liability of the petitioner. Article 352 of the RPC, as amended, does not make this an element of the crime.

The decision of the Court of Appeals was affirmed.

WORST INK STILL BETTER THAN THE BEST MEMORY?

When you snap a picture with your cellphone or digital camera, what do you do with it?  Do you still have it “developed”?  When your company asks for a report, do you still print it out or would it exist only in some computer or backed up in Dropbox or some cloud storage?    When you read a book, “do you read it off the screen just like everyone else” or do you still flip through pages like they did in days of old?

Argentine Humanist Alberto Manguel had this to say:

Even the newer electronic technologies cannot approach the experience of handling an original publication. As any reader knows, a printed page creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape in which the texture of the paper, the colour of the ink, the view of the whole ensemble acquire in the reader’s hands specific meanings that lend tone and context to the words. (Columbia University’s librarian Patricia Battin, a fierce advocate for the microfilming of books, disagreed with this notion. “The value,” she wrote, “in intellectual terms, of the proximity of the book to the user has never been satisfactorily established.” There speaks a dolt, someone utterly insensitive, in intellectual or any other terms, to the experience of reading.)

But above all, the argument that calls for electronic reproduction on account of the endangered life of paper is a false one. Anybody who has used a computer knows how easy it is to lose a text on the screen, to come upon a faulty disk or CD, to have the hard drive crash beyond all appeal. The tools of the electronic media are not immortal. The life of a disk is about seven years; a CD-ROM lasts about ten. In 1986, the BBC spent two and a half million pounds creating a computer-based, multi-media version of the Domesday Book, the eleventh-century census of England compiled by Norman monks.

More ambitious than its predecessor, the electronic Domesday Book contained 250,000 place names, 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 3,000 data sets and 60 minutes of moving pictures, plus scores of accounts that recorded “life in Britain” during that year. Over a million people contributed to the project, which was stored on twelve-inch laser disks that could only be deciphered by a special BBC microcomputer. Sixteen years later, in March 2002, an attempt was made to read the information on one of the few such computers still in existence. The attempt failed. Further solutions were sought to retrieve the data, but none was entirely successful. “There is currently no demonstrably viable technical solution to this problem,” said Jeff Rothenberg of the Rand Corporation, one of the world experts on data preservation, called in to assist. “Yet, if it is not solved, our increasingly digital heritage is in grave risk of being lost.”  By contrast, the original Domesday Book, almost a thousand years old, written in ink on paper and kept at the Public Record Office in Kew, is in fine condition and still perfectly readable.

The director for the electronic records archive program at the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States confessed in November 2004 that the preservation of electronic material, even for the next decade, let alone for eternity, “is a global problem for the biggest governments and the biggest corporations all the way down to individuals.” Since no clear solution is available, electronic experts recommend that users copy their materials onto CDs, but even these are of short duration. The lifespan of data recorded on a CD with a CD burner could be as little as five years. In fact, we don’t know for how long it will be possible to read a text inscribed on a 2004 CD. And while it is true that acidity and brittleness, fire and the legendary bookworms threaten ancient codexes and scrolls, not everything written or printed on parchment or paper is condemned to an early grave. A few years ago, in the Archeological Museum of Naples, I saw, held between two plates of glass, the ashes of a papyrus rescued from the ruins of Pompeii. It was two thousand years old; it had been burnt by the fires of Vesuvius, it had been buried under a flow of lava—and I could still read the letters written on it, with astonishing clarity. (footnotes omitted)

The Beauty of Books 

Manuscripts and typescript drafts can easily be read if they are found.  You will also be able to find a wealth of meaning by examining various versions of the manuscript versus the published version.  But the ephemeral nature of electronic word processing makes it difficult to find the same level of textual analysis from authors.  With the advent of electronic composition and storage of books is the elimination and disappearance of drafts.  In the past, an author would make a series of drafts before coming up with a final manuscript.  Historians, hagiographers, biographers and other academics would find these drafts a very rich source of what the author was trying to write and what he was trying to say.  Remember José Rizal's lost chapter in the Noli Me Tangere, a chapter thatwas later included in some critical editions.  Jefferson's drafts of the declaration of liberty have been examined over and over again by historians and political scientists seeking to “get into Jefferson's brain.”  In this blog, I have an ongoing project to write a study guide of Los Pájaros de Fuego, the “lost novel” of José Balmori, is based on the critical edition of Isaac Donoso which contains glosses of previous drafts of the novel.

There are legal implications as well.  In the Philippine setting, legal instruments are, without exception, paper documents.  For example, there is no such thing as a “video will”.  In other legal traditions, we have the UK Parliament, where a law is only formally passed once it is printed in parchment.  Indeed, the durability of parchment and ink and paper and ink is not something we can easily replicate with the electronic medium.

What is the legal status therefore, of so called “electronic titles”?  Of late, the Land Registation Authority (LRA) has been digitizing the land records of our country.  Basically, all physical titles on file with the LRA are scanned and kept in a server somewhere in Scandinavia.¹  A law professor discussed that these electronic titles have no legal status.  The only title to land in the Philippines is the physical certificate of title on file with the LRA, and thus the title can still be physically destroyed and the scanned copy on file somewhere in Norway cannot simply replace the physical title. 

Imagine also if something were to happen to the hard drive in Norway, and everything up in the cloud were to suddenly disappear—all of the precious digital-only land title system would be in complete disarray.  People had a big row if Facebook or Instagram would suddenly go down and all of their precious pictures and memories with it, how much more the indefeasibility of a person’s ownership of a parcel of land?

The Feared Blue Screen of Death

What do you guys think?  Paper or electronic?

Footnotes:

[1] This is just an example, but many servers are located in Scandinavia to take advantage of cold weather to save on airconditioning costs.