Member Article

Here are select February 2013 rulings of the Supreme Court of the Philippines on remedial law:

Civil Procedure

Actions; cause of action; elements; failure to state a cause of action is ground for dismissal. A complaint states a cause of action if it avers the existence of the three essential elements of a cause of action, namely:

(a)         The legal right of the plaintiff;

(b)         The correlative obligation of the defendant and

(c)         The act or omission of the defendant in violation of said legal right.

If the allegations in the complaint do not aver the concurrence of these elements, the complaint becomes vulnerable to a motion to dismiss on the ground of failure to state a cause of. A perusal of the Amended Complaint in the present case would show that there is, indeed, no allegation of any act or omission on the part of respondents which supposedly violated the legal rights of petitioners. Thus, the CA is correct in dismissing the complaint on the ground of failure to state a cause of action. Padilla Mercado, Zulueta Mercado, et al. v. Spouses Aguedo Espina and Lourdes Espina; G.R. No. 173987. February 25, 2013

Actions; moot and academic principle. Verily, in Gancho-on v. Secreatry of Labor and Employment,the Court emphatically stated that:

It is a rule of universal application, almost, that courts of justice constituted to pass upon substantial rights will not consider questions in which no actual interests are involved; they decline jurisdiction of moot cases. And where the issue has become moot and academic, there is no justiciable controversy, so that a declaration thereon would be of no practical use or value. There is no actual substantial relief to which petitioners would be entitled and which would be negated by the dismissal of the petition.

Applying the above pronouncement, there was no justiciable controversy anymore in the instant petition in view of the expiration of the Compromise Agreement sought to be...

Read the rest of the article at Lexoterica.