ManilaEN
BANC
PEOPLE
OF THE PHILIPPINES,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
G. R. No. L-37642
October 22, 1973
-versus-
FELIZA
CASUGA y MUNAR,
Accused-Appellant.
D
E C I S I O N
TEEHANKEE, J.:
The Court
herein affirms the judgment of conviction
for slight slander as rendered by the La Union Court of First Instance
after trial de novo on an appeal by the accused-appellant from
an
adverse original judgment of the Municipal Court of San Fernando, La
Union.
The Court, thus, reaffirms the principle that while the jurisdiction of
a court may be challenged at any time, sound public policy bars a party
such as appellant from so doing belatedly and challenging the
jurisdiction
of the Court of First Instance after having expressly procured that
jurisdiction
herself and speculating on the fortunes of litigation.
Accused-appellant
was originally charged on July
9, 1964 with grave slander in the municipal court of San Fernando, La
Union
for having uttered defamatory words in calling the offended party,
Erlinda
Munar, an unmarried woman and a distant relative, the paramour of
somebody.
The Municipal Court rejected her defense of alibi and per its Decision
of September 8, 1964 sentenced her to pay a fine of P20.00 with
subsidiary
imprisonment in case of insolvency and to pay the costs.[1]
Accused-appellant
filed an appeal directly to
the La Union court of first instance and filed the P100. appeal
bond
as fixed by the Municipal Court. She was duly re-arraigned by the said
court and entered her not-guilty plea on December 23, 1964. The said
court
thereafter conducted a full dress trial de novo with extensive hearings
on October 11, 1965, December 9, 1965, December 29, 1965, August 11,
1966,
October 4, 1966 and January 5, 1967, on which last date the trial court
declared the reception of evidence closed.cralaw:red
The trial court
thereafter rendered its Decision
of January 30, 1967, wherein like the municipal court it rejected as
not
worthy of credence the accused's defense of alibi that she was in
Manila
on the day of the commission of the offense and took a moderate view of
her defamatory remarks, finding her guilty merely of slight slander and
imposing a P50.00 fine with subsidiary imprisonment in case of
insolvency
and payment of costs. The trial court however sentenced the accused to
indemnify the offended party in the amount of P500.00 by way of civil
liability.cralaw:red
The accused filed
a motion for reconsideration
praying for acquittal and for reduction of the civil liability to
P100.00.
The trial court in its reasoned order of February 8, 1967 denied
reconsideration,
rejecting the belated objection raised for the first time by accused as
to the proceedings being invalid because the private prosecutor
conducted
the examination of the witnesses on three hearing days, notwithstanding
his announcement later withdrawn, that the offended party would
file
a separate civil case and ruling correctly that since the government
prosecutors
were present at the hearings, the prosecution of the case remained
under
their control and the private prosecutor's presence and participation
which
were then not objected to were "of no particular importance."
The accused
thereafter filed her notice of appeal
directly to the Supreme Court "solely on a question of law, to wit:
that
there was no legal basis for the judgment of conviction because the
proceedings
were null and void as the private prosecutor had no legal personality
to
represent, or present evidence for, the prosecution in view of the
reservation
of the civil action, as borne out by the records."[2]
Notwithstanding
that the trial court ordered the
record elevated to this Court, its clerk forwarded the records to the
Court
of Appeals where the parties filed their briefs. Then
Solicitor-General,
now a member of this Court, Justice Antonio P. Barredo noted this
oversight
in the People's brief filed on February 14, 1968, and further prayed
that
since the appeal was solely on questions of law that the same be
certified
to this Court. This was eventually done in the appellate court's
resolution
of September 19, 1973, transmitted to this Court on October 10, 1973,
forwarding
the case to this Court as raising pure questions of law.cralaw:red
The original sole
question of law raised by accused-appellant
that private prosecutor for the offended party had no legal personality
to conduct the examination of some witnesses and that his participation
rendered null and void the proceedings is manifestly without merit.
Aside
from the fact that accused's objection brought up only in her motion
for
reconsideration was too late, the objection had no valid basis since
the
private prosecutor had withdrawn the reservation to file a separate
civil
case and prosecution of the case remained at all times under the
control
of the government prosecutors.cralaw:red
As to the
additional question of jurisdiction
raised for the first time by the accused-appellant only in her brief on
appeal that the crime of grave slander[3]
of which she was charged comes within the area of concurrent
jurisdiction
of municipal courts of provincial capitals or city courts and courts of
first instance, and that the judgment of the La Union court of first
instance
to which she had expressly appealed the municipal court's conviction
should
be deemed null and void for want of jurisdiction as her appeal should
have
been directly to the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court,[4]
this question is foreclosed by the doctrine of estoppel enunciated by
the
Court that "after voluntarily submitting a cause and encountering an
adverse
decision on the merits, it is too late for the loser to question the
jurisdiction
or power of the court." As restated in Crisostomo vs. Reyes and a
number
of subsequent cases, the principle decrees that "While the jurisdiction
of a tribunal may be challenged at any time, sound public policy bars
the
petitioners from so doing after their having procured that jurisdiction
themselves, speculating on the fortunes of litigation."[5]
As specifically
applied to criminal cases, the
Court in Vera vs. People[6]
refused to set aside the judgment of conviction of the
petitioners-accused
as affirmed by the Court of Appeals on the ground that the therein
accused
were barred from raising too late the question of nullity of the trial
court's judgment which was promulgated to the accused only after the
presiding
judge's retirement when he was no longer the judge of the said court.
The
Court again stressed therein the rationale for its doctrine whereby a
party
is precluded from raising what would otherwise be a decisive
jurisdictional
question only after an adverse decision had been rendered by the very
court
whose jurisdiction has been invoked by a party to obtain affirmative
relief
and a final adjudication on the merits and whose jurisdiction the party
would now spurn. As stated in Tijam vs. Sibonghanoy[7]
to sanction such conduct would result in revolting inequity and
unfairness,
with the nullification of all the proceedings had over an extended
period
of time, 20 years in that case and almost 10 years in the case at bar.cralaw:red
As the People's
brief puts it, an appellant cannot
be permitted to experiment with the court - the court of first instance
in the case of herein appellant by submitting herself to its
jurisdiction
and after the experiment has proved unsuccessful for her with the
rendition
of an adverse decision to raise for the first time its lack of
jurisdiction.
As restated by Chief Justice Roberto Concepcion in Francisco vs. City
of
Davao, the ends of justice would not be served if such belated
jurisdictional
questions were to be entertained and the proceedings nullified
when
the court's jurisdiction had been invoked all the time by the party who
would now belatedly question its jurisdiction because of its adverse
decision.cralaw:red
Sound public
policy and the interests of a just,
orderly, efficient and inexpensive administration of justice, whereby
justice
and fairness are accorded both to plaintiff and defendant, to the
offended
party as well as to the accused, properly raise a barrier against a
party
who would speculate on the fortunes of litigation and in the event of
an
adverse decision, challenge the jurisdiction of the very tribunal whose
jurisdiction he or she has invoked and procured at the expenditure of
so
much time, expense and effort on the part of the litigants and of the
State.
A graphic illustration of the soundness of this policy and doctrine is
the present case where appellant would set at naught a mere judgment
imposing
a P50.00 fine and P500.00 civil liability upon her rendered after
protracted
and extensive hearings conducted by the lower court in a case which has
been pending for almost ten years now since its inception and, in the
language
of Sibonghanoy, would compel the offended party "to go up [her] Calvary
once more."
As a matter of
substantial justice, both the Municipal
Court and the Court of First Instance in the case at bar had dealt with
the criminal charge of grave slander against the accused-appellant as
if
it were one of slight slander punishable with a penalty of arresto
mayor
or a fine not exceeding P200.00 and both courts imposed merely a
fine well below the maximum of P200.00. In this context, the Municipal
Court can be said to have properly exercised exclusive original
jurisdiction
and the Court of First Instance to have properly exercised appellate
jurisdiction
as invoked by the accused-appellant herself and she cannot now be
allowed to question for the very first time here the very jurisdiction
invoked by her, especially where she has raised no question whatever as
to the correctness in fact and in law of the penalty and civil
liability
imposed upon her by the lower court's judgment.cralaw:red
ACCORDINGLY, the
Decision appealed from is hereby
affirmed in toto, with costs.cralaw:red
Makalintal, Actg.
C. J., Zaldivar, Fernando,
Makasiar, Antonio and Esguerra, JJ., concur.
Castro, J., concurs in the result.
Barredo, J., took no part.cralaw:red
_____________________________
Endnotes
[1]
The Municipal Court record does not show any stenographic record of the
testimony of the witnesses, but only a list of the witnesses who
testified.
[2]
Record, page 84.
[3]
Carrying an imposable penalty of arresto mayor in its maximum period to
prison correccional in its minimum period under Art. 358, Revised Penal
Code.
[4]
Citing the then recently decided case of Esperat vs. Avila, 20 SCRA 596
[June 30, 1967]. The Court therein pointed out, however, that "should
the
evidence not have been recorded (or transcribed) as required by the
last
part of section 87 (c) of the Judiciary law, then the trial of the
criminal
case [by the municipal court] would be a entire nullity." [at page
602].
Since the municipal court kept no such record, the trial de novo
conducted
by the court of first instance could properly be deemed in exercise of
its original concurrent jurisdiction.
[5]
Calderon vs. Public Service Commission, 38 SCRA 624, 633 [April 30,
1971]
citing Tijam vs. Sibonghanoy, 33 SCRA 29 [April 15, 1968], and cases
cited
therein and Crisostomo vs. Reyes, 32 SCRA [March 25, 1970].
[6]
31 SCRA 711 [February 18, 1970].
[7]
Supra. fn. 5. |