FIRST
DIVISION
STANLEY
J. FORTICH,
Petitioner,
G. R. No. 120769
February 12, 1997
-versus-
COURT
OF APPEALS and
FELIX T. GALLERON,
Respondents.
D
E C I S I O N
KAPUNAN, J.:
For over five
years since August 1973, petitioner
Stanley J. Fortich was employed as an area salesman of the soft drinks
division of San Miguel Corporation in Dipolog City, a job which
required
him to collect various sums of money from the retailers and buyers of
the
company along his designated route.
On June 5, 1979,
petitioner received a Memorandum
ordering him to stop plying his route and collecting the sums owed by
customers
to the company for the stated reason of his alleged "NONISSUANCE (sic)
OF EITHER CHANGE REFUND NOR OFFICIAL RECEIPT FOR EMPTIES RETRIEVED FROM
OUTLETS WITH TEMPORARY CREDIT SALES."[1]
The order grounding petitioner, signed by herein respondent Felipe T.
Carreon
in his capacity as District Sales Supervisor, likewise directed
petitioner
to instead report directly "to the sales office every working day at
the
prescribed company time."[2]
Following up on
his first memorandum and alleging
that petitioner misappropriated the amount of P1,605.00 from his
collections
[through non-issuance of invoices to several customers] private
respondent
on June 11, 1975, submitted a second inter-office memorandum addressed
to the Regional Sales Manager summarizing the findings of an initial
investigation
he conducted on the matter, which he concluded with the following
paragraph:
In addition, I would like to further
inform
management
that S/M Stanley Fortich is an avid mahjong player and a cockfighting
enthusiast.
Inspite of several advices, there seems to be no change in his
lifestyle.
Also, respondent had a similar case last September 11, 1978.[3]
After further
investigation by the company which
found petitioner guilty of misappropriating company funds, petitioner
was
preventively suspended from his job. The order suspending petitioner
also
decreed his dismissal "upon receipt of clearance from the Ministry of
Labor."[4]
Claiming that the
above-quoted second memorandum
issued by the private respondent was "willful, malicious and done in
gross
bad faith,"[5]
petitioner, on September 28, 1979 filed a complaint for "Damages
Arising
from Libel" with the Court of First Instance [now Regional Trial Court]
of Zamboanga Del Norte. In his complaint, he alleged that:
xxx xxx xxx
[T]he defendant has pictured the
plaintiff
in
his report [Annex "B"] as a thief, corrupt or dishonest man and even
going
to the extent of exposing in public the alleged vices of the plaintiff
such as mahjong and cockfighting.
[T]he defendant is guilty of gross bad
faith
and malice in the highest degree for making and publishing a false, and
libelous report for the purpose of putting down the good name and
reputation
of the plaintiff and his family.
xxx xxx xxx[6]
Petitioner then
prayed that the trial court grant
the total amount of P171,000.00 to him as moral and exemplary damages,
attorney's fees and expenses of litigation. On November 5, 1990, the
Regional
Trial Court rendered its decision[7]
in favor of herein petitioner, the dispositive portion of which states
the following:
PREMISES CONSIDERED, the Court hereby
renders
judgment
1. Ordering the defendant to pay to
the
plaintiff
the following sums: [a] P150,000.00 for moral damages; [b] P50,000.00
for
exemplary damages; [c] P20.000.00 for attorney's fees; and [d]
P1,000.00
for litigation expenses;
2. Dismissing the defendant's
counterclaim
for
lack of merit; and
3. Ordering the defendant to pay the
costs.[8]
Principally
contending in his assignment of errors
that no actual malice existed or had been shown in respect to the
questioned
[second] memorandum and that in any case, the assailed letter was
protected
by the privileged communication rule, the private respondent appealed
the
trial court's decision to the Court of Appeals.
On February 21,
1995, respondent court reversed
the trial court's decision on the ground that the memorandum was not
libelous
being "within the ambit of privileged communications." Motion for
Reconsideration
was denied by the Court of Appeals on May 31, 1995, hence, the instant
petition for review on certiorari.cralaw:red
The appeal is not
impressed with merit.cralaw:red
The provisions of
law applicable to the case at
bar are embodied in Articles 353 and 354 of the Revised Penal Code
which
state the following:
Art. 353. Definition of Libel.-
A libel is a public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice
or
defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or
circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a
natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is
dead.
Art. 354. Requirement for
publicity.-
Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be
true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is
shown,
except in the following cases:
1. A private communication made by any
person
to another in the performance of any legal, moral or social duty; and
2. A fair and true report, made in
good
faith,
without any comments or remarks, of any judicial, legislative or other
official proceedings which are not of confidential nature, or of any
statement,
report or speech delivered in said proceedings, or of any other act
performed
by public officers in the exercise of their functions.
Nothing in the
evidence on record would suggest that
the key elements of publicity found in the definition of libel in
Article
353 of the Revised Penal Code are present in the case before Us.
Firstly, the assailed letter was obviously part
and parcel of the initial investigation surrounding the non-remittance
of collections by petitioner. The right hand caption of the memorandum
clearly shows the phrase "Inter-office Memorandum,"[9]
implying confidentiality. Secondly, petitioner was unable to prove that
the letter was circulated or publicized, much less read by officers of
the corporation other than those involved in the investigation or those
directly supervising the petitioner's work. While imputation of a vice
or defect on the petitioner's character might have been apparent from
the
second to the last paragraph of the memorandum, the imputation was
never
really made publicly.
More importantly,
petitioner in the court below
was not able to establish satisfactorily that the issuance of the
letter
and its offending paragraph was motivated by malice. As respondent
Court
of Appeals correctly held:
Neither does this Court find positive
proof
that
the appellant was motivated by malice in the issuance of the memorandum
claimed to be libelous, addressed to the proper officials of San Miguel
Corporation. In other words, the onus of proving actual malice is
placed
on the plaintiff-appellee who must convince the Court that the offender
was prompted by malice or ill will. Once this is accomplished, the
defense
of privilege is unavailing. [Nanerico D. Santos vs. The Court of
Appeals,
et. al., 203 SCRA 110, 114]. Our ruling is buttressed by the fact that
no proof has been adduced to show that the subject Memorandum was
released
to persons other than the officials concerned.[10]
Malice exists
when there is an intentional doing
of a wrongful act without just cause. An imputation is legally
malicious
if done without any reason that would justify a normally conscientious
man in so making the imputation.[11]
While the law presumes every defamatory imputation to be malicious,
there
are exceptions to this rule. The record indicates that this case falls
under the settled exceptions to the rule: the private respondent's
inter-office
memorandum falls within the ambit of privileged communication rule.
A privileged
communication is one made bona fide
upon any subject matter in which the party communicating has an
interest,
or in reference to which he has a duty.[12]
Discussing the scope of this rule, former Chief Justice Fernando, in
Mercado
v. CFI of Rizal,[13]
explained that:
Even when the statements are found to be
false,
if there is probable cause for belief in their truthfulness and the
charge
is made in good faith, the mantle of privilege may still cover the
mistake
of the individual. But the statements must be made under an honest
sense
of duty;
In the instant
case, it is well-worth stressing that
the private respondent was, as the District Sales Supervisor of the
corporation's
Dipolog office, the immediate supervisor of petitioner. In this
capacity,
respondent was charged with the duty to carry out and enforce company
rules
and policies, including the duty to undertake initial investigation of
possible irregularities in customer accounts in order to suggest
further
action which could be taken by the company. In fact, the communications
initially submitted by the private respondent to his superiors prompted
the investigation which eventually led to petitioner's preventive
suspension
and to the decision by the company's proper officers to terminate the
latter's
employment. In making his earlier recommendation, the private
respondent
relied on the affidavits submitted by at least three of the company's
clients
[all attesting to irregularities][14]
and his initial though yet-unsubstantiated findings that respondent was
an "avid mahjong player and a cockfight enthusiast." That the
affidavits
were subsequently found to have been gathered by the private respondent
himself did not diminish their quality. Investigation necessarily
includes
the gathering and solicitation of information.
Even granting
that the questioned memorandum
particularly the above quoted paragraph contains statements which
could be slanderous and therefore actionable were they not protected by
the rule on privileged communications, still as no malice was shown, we
agree with the respondent court's conclusion that the assailed
memorandum
report was an official act done in good faith, an honest innocent
statement
arising from a moral and legal obligation which the private respondent
certainly owed to the company in the performance of his duties. The
opinion
which the private respondent expressed in the discharge of his duty
might
have skirted the boundary which usually separates innocent opinion from
actionable defamation. Paradoxically, however, if he did not hazard the
warning, though it might have subsequently turned out to be a reckless
one, he would have been remiss in his responsibilities to the company.
The rule on privileged communications allows the latitude of expression
embodied in the private respondent's second memorandum.cralaw:red
WHEREFORE, there
being no reversible error in
the decision sought to be reviewed, the petition is hereby DENIED.cralaw:red
SO ORDERED.cralaw:red
Padilla,
Bellosillo, Vitug, Hermosisima, Jr.,
JJ., concur.cralaw:red
_________________________________
Endnotes
[1]
Annex "A," Original Records, p. 9.
[2]
Id.
[3]
Id., Annex "B."
[4]
Id., Annex "C."
[5]
Id., p. 7.
[6]
Id., at 6.
[7]
Rollo, pp. 18-29.
[8]
Id., at 28-29.
[9]
Original Records, pp. 10-11.
[10]
CA Rollo, CA-G. R. CV No. 33099, p. 102.
[11]
Sibal, Philippine Legal Encyclopedia, 544 [1986].
[12]
Mercado v. CFI. 116 SCRA 93 [1982].
[13]
Id., at 99.
[14]
Original Records, pp. 14-22. |