JUAN BELLO, FILOMENA C. BELLO, petitioners, vs. HON. COURT OF APPEALS, * HON. FRANCISCO LLAMAS, as Judge of Pasay City Court, and REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES, respondents; G.R. No. L-38161 March 29, 1974

TOPIC: Article 10: In case of doubt in the interpretation and application of laws, it is presumed that the lawmaking body intended right and justice to prevail.

RATIONALE:

GIST: Spouses Bello were charged with and convicted of estafa by the city court. Sps. Bello appealed to CFI but it was dismissed for having been erroneously addressed to the said court. They then filed a prohibition from execution of judgment and for their appeal to be elevated to CA. CA then dismissed their petition w/o weighing their case's merit on the ground that CFI should have been made the principal party under Rule 65 Sec. 3. This being the case, CA couldn't grant any relief. They moved for reconsideration and that their case be elevated to CA but it was denied by the appellate court for the sps. "wrong procedure", "wrong respondent," and for lack of merit.

FACTS:

1. August 25, 1970, spouses Bello were charged with estafa for allegedly having misappropriated a lady’s ring with a value of P1, 000.00 received from them from Atty. Prudencio De Guzman for sale on commission basis. After trial, they were convicted and sentenced before the City Court of Pasay. 

2. They then filed an appeal to the Court of First Instance and after that to the respondent city court which was also dismissed and ordered for execution of judgment “for having been erroneously addressed to this court”.

3. Petitioner spouses then filed for prohibition and mandamus against the People and respondent city court to prohibit the execution judgment and elevate their appeal to the Court of Appeals which was again dismissed after finding that the city court’s judgment was directly appealable to it.

4. Petitioners filed their notice of appeal of the adverse judgment to the Court of First Instance of Pasay City. Prosecution's petition to dismiss appeal was granted, on the ground that the case was within the concurrent jurisdiction of the city court and the court of first instance, and the trial in the city court had been duly recorded, the appeal should have been taken directly to the Court of Appeals as provided by section 87 of the Judiciary Act, Republic Act 296, as amended

5. Petitioners opposed invoking Rule 50, section 3 directing that the Court of Appeals in cases erroneously brought to it "shall not dismiss the appeal, but shall certify the case to the proper court, with a specific and clear statement of the grounds therefor," prayed of the court of first instance if it should find the appeal to have been wrongly brought before it, to certify the same "to either the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court."

6. The court of first instance per its order of October 29, 1971 found that the appeal should have been taken directly to the Court of Appeals but ordered the dismissal of the appeal and remand of the records to the city court "for execution of judgment."

7. Petitioners aver that they were not notified of the order of dismissal of their appeal and learned of it only when they were called by the Pasay city court for execution of the judgment of conviction.

8. Hence, they filed with the city court their "motion to elevate appeal to Court of Appeals" of December 7, 1971 stating that "through inadvertence and/or excusable neglect" they had erroneously filed a notice of appeal to the court of first instance instead of to the Court of Appeals as the proper court and prayed that the city court, following precedents of this Court remanding appeals before it to the proper court instead of dismissing appeals, "elevate the records ... to the Court of Appeals for proper review."

9. Respondent city court per its order of December 11, 1971 denied petitioners' motion "for having been erroneously addressed to this court" instead of to the court of first instance6 ignoring petitioners' predicament that the court of first instance had already turned them down and ordered the dismissal of their appeal without notice to them and that as a consequence it was poised to execute its judgment of conviction against them.

10. Petitioners spouses then filed on January 14, 1972 their petition for prohibition and mandamus against the People and respondent city court to prohibit the execution of the judgment and to compel respondent city court to elevate their appeal to the Court of Appeals.

11. The Court of Appeals, however, per its decision of December 17, 1973 dismissed the petition, after finding that the city court's judgment was directly appealable to it. CA held that when they appealed to CFI, that was procedurally wrong; of course, CFI instead of dismissing appeal, could have in the exercise of its inherent powers, directed appeal to be endorsed to this Court of Appeals, but when instead of doing so, it dismissed, it also had power to do so, and correction of it is difficult to see to be remediable by mandamus, but ignoring this altogether, what this Court finds is that since it was CFI that dismissed the appeal and according to petitioners, wrongly, it must follow that if CFI was wrong, this plea for mandamus to compel it to act "correctly" should have been directed against said CFI, it should have been the CFI, Hon. Francisco de la Rosa, who should have been made under Rule 65 Sec. 3, herein principal party respondent, but he was not, this being the situation, this Court can not see how it can grant any relief at all even on the assumption that petitioners can be said to deserve some equities.

ISSUE:

W/N respondent Court of Appeals erred in dismissing the appeal for wrong procedure.

RULING:

YES. The Court of Appeals erred in dismissing the wrong procedure. CA should have not dismissed the appeal but should have certified the case to the proper court. It is of the essence of judicial duty to construe statutes so as to avoid such deplorable result of injustice and absurdity and that a literal interpretation is to be rejected if it would be unjust or lead to absurd results.

It certainly was within the inherent power of the court of first instance in exercise of its power to "control its process and orders so as to make them conformable to law and justice"  to grant petitioners-accused's timely plea to endorse their appeal to the Court of Appeals as the proper court and within the context and spirit of Rule 50, section 3. 

Rule 50, Section 3 provides:

In cases erroneously brought to CA, it "shall not dismiss the appeal, but shall certify the case to the proper court, with a specific and clear statement of the grounds therefor,"

The appellate court while recognizing that petitioners' appeal taken to the court of first instance was "procedurally wrong" and that the court of first instance "in the exercise of its inherent powers could have certified the appeal to it as the proper court instead of dismissing the appeal, gravely erred in holding that it could not "correct" the court of first instance's "wrong action" and grant the relief sought of having the appeal elevated to it since said court's presiding judge "who should have been-made under Rule 65, sec. 3 10 herein principal party respondent, but he was not." The Court has always stressed as in Torre vs. Ericta 11 that a respondent judge is "merely a nominal party" in special civil actions for certiorari, prohibition and mandamus and that he "is not a person "in interest" within the purview (of Rule 65, section 5 12)" and "accordingly, he has no standing or authority to appeal from or seek a review on certiorari" of an adverse decision of the appellate court setting aside his dismissal of a party's appeal and issuing the writ of mandamus for him to allow the appeal.

In a mis-directed appeal to the Court of Appeals of a case that pertains to the court of first instance's jurisdiction, the said Rule expressly provides that the Court of Appeals "shall not dismiss the appeal but shall certify the case to the proper court" viz, the court of first instance in the given example. There is no logical reason why in all fairness and justice the court of first instance in a misdirected appeal to it should not be likewise bound by the same rule and therefore enjoined not to dismiss the appeal but to certify the case to the Court of Appeals as the proper court. The paucity of the language of the Rule and its failure to expressly provide for such cases of misdirected appeals to the court of first instance (owing possibly to the fact that at the time of the revision of the Rules of Court in 1963 section 87 (c) had been newly amended under Republic Act 2613 approved on June 22, 1963 to enlarge the jurisdiction of city courts and municipal courts of provincial capitals and provide for their concurrent jurisdiction with the courts of first instance and direct appeal from their judgments in such cases to the Court of Appeals) should not be a cause for unjustly depriving petitioners of their substantial right of appeal.

SC: the decision of the Court of Appeals dismissing the petition is hereby set aside and in lieu thereof, judgment is hereby rendered granting the petition for prohibition against respondent city court which is hereby enjoined from executing its judgment of conviction against petitioners-accused and further commanding said city court to elevate petitioners' appeal from its judgment to the Court of Appeals for the latter's disposition on the merits. No costs.

LECTURE: