FERNANDO GUEVARRA AND MARCOS GUEVARRA, PETITIONERS, VS. VICENTE DEL ROSARIO, JUDGE OF FIRST INSTANCE OF TAYABAS, HERMOGENES CALUAG, PASTOR C. JAVIER,. CARLOS A. BUENDIA, AND SEB…

PADILLA, J.:

Fernando Guevarra and Marcos Guevarra pray for a writ of mandamus to compel
the respondent court to conduct a preliminary investigation upon a complaint
filed by them on June 28, 1944, charging Hermogenes Caluag, Provincial Fiscal of
Tayabas, Pastor C. Javier, Municipal Mayor of Candelaria, Tayabas; Carlos A.
Buendia, Justice of the Peace of Sariaya and Candelaria, Tayabas, and Sebastian
A. Li wag, Clerk of Court of the Justice of the Peace of Candelaria, Tayabas,
with the crime of falsification of public documents, denned and punished under
article 171 of the Revised Penal Code. They also pray that the respondent court
be compelled to communicate on the subject matter of the complaint with the
Secretary of Justice . so that the latter may appoint an acting fiscal in view
of the incumbent’s disqualification to act in the case.

Two days after the filing of the complaint referred to, the respondent court
acting thereon ordered the return of the complaint to the petitioners, for the
reason that the Ministry of Justice or the Bureau of Public Prosecution of the
Republic of the Philippines should first be heard before the complaint might be
entertained. A motion for reconsideration of the order was denied on July 14,
1944.

The Director of Prisons reports in CA-G. R. No. 77 that the petitioners died
in Bilibid Prisons. Emilio Guevarra and Ciriaco Guevarra, son and brother of the
petitioners, pray to be allowed to substitute the petitioners in this case.

The substitution prayed for calls for determination of the question whether,
upon the death of the petitioners, the action brought in this proceeding
survived to their heirs or legal representatives. The action survived if the
cause of action survived. The cause of action, upon which this proceeding in
mandamus is predicated, arose from the failure of the respondent court to
conduct a preliminary investigation upon a complaint filed by the petitioners
charging certain officers with the crime of falsification of public documents.
The right of the petitioners to file a complaint charging the commission of a
crime is personal. It is so, because as required in section 2, Rule 106, a
con> plaint charging a person with an offense must be subscribed by the
offended party. The right being personal, the complaint filed by the petitioners
with the respondent court abated upon their death.

Likewise, the cause of action, upon which this proceeding in mandamus is
based, is personal. The failure of the respondent court to conduct a preliminary
investigation which gave rise to this proceeding was upon petitioners’
complaint. The heirs or legal representatives of the late petitioners could not
justly complain of the failure of the respondent court to conduct a preliminary
investigation, because they had filed no complaint. It was the complaint of the
deceased petitioners. The cause of action in this proceeding did not survive to
the heirs or legal representatives of the late petitioners, because the
complaint filed by the petitioners with the respondent court, from which the
cause of action in this proceeding arose, abated upon the death of said
petitioners. Hence this proceeding cannot be prosecuted or continued by the
heirs or legal representatives of the late petitioners, for the cause of action
upon which it is predicated is personal and did not survive to said heirs and
legal representatives.

Motion for substitution is denied and petition for a writ of mandamus abated,
without costs.

Hilado, Bengzon, Briones, and Tuason, JJ.,
concur.

CONCURRING

FERIA, J., with whom concur MORAN, C. J.,
and PABLO, J.:

I concur in the majority decision for the following reasons:

It is true and plain that the abatement of actions, either 1 by operation of
the law or the will of the parties, does not carry with it the extinction of the
right of action; but it is also true that the extinction of a cause or right of
action necessarily and impliedly carries with it the abatement of the pending
action to enforce it, because the latter is but the legal means of enforcing the
former.

The common law rule that the death of a party abates a pending action
irrespective of whether or not the cause of action survives, has never been in
force or applied in this jurisdiction. Section 119 of the old Code of Civil
Procedure Act No. 190, from which section 17, Rule 3, of the Rules of Court was
taken, provided that “In case a party to an action dies while the action is
pending, the action shall not abate by reason thereof, but the court on motion
may allow the action or proceeding to be continued by or against his executor,
administrator or other legal representative, etc.”

Where the cause of action is entirely personal to the plaintiff and does not
survive to his representatives, such as the right to support, divorce, and so
forth, the action abates on the death of the plaintiff. But if the right of
action is not personal and survives to the representatives of the deceased, the
action is not abated or extinguished by the death of the plaintiff, and the
latter will be substituted by his legal representative under section 17, Rule 3
of the Rules of Court.

According to our Rules of Court, mandamus is a special civil action, and
therefore the provisions of section 17, Rule 3, on substitution of parties who
die during the pendency of a suit apply. Rules 1 to 3 of the Rules of Court
contain general provisions applicable to all civil actions, ordinary and
special, as contradistinguished from a special proceeding; and section 1, Rule
65 of the same Rules further prescribes that “the provisions of the preceding
rules (including said Rule 3) shall apply in actions * * * for mandamus, etc.”
This is in accordance with the rule prevailing in United States, where “it is
now considered in most jurisdictions, and especially in those where both legal
and equitable remedies are administered by the same tribunal or where the code
system of procedure obtains, that a mandamus proceeding: is not a special
proceeding, but that it is nothing more nor less than an action at law, or a
civil action under the code.” (18 U. C. L., 333.)

The doctrine enunciated in 18 It. C. L., 335, section 287, as laid down in
the case of People vs. Western Life Indemnity Co. et al. (2G1 111., 513), to the
effect that “A proceeding in mandamus is in the nature of personal action, and
it generally abates on the death of the person in whose behalf they have .been
instituted, is not borne out by the decision in that case. It is true that the
Supreme Court of Illinois held in said, case that mandamus is a personal action,
and the language used was broad enough to warrant the conclusion that the court
takes the position that all mandamus proceedings abate on the death of the
petitioner; but the subject matter of the action in said case was such that the
personal representative who sought to be substituted as petitioner had no
interest in its continued prosecution. Said conclusion can not, therefore, be
considered as a general rule, but applicable only to cases involving the same or
similar facts. In the same decision, it is said that ‘This Court has stated that
where a right of action is so entirely personal that a person, by contract, can
not place it beyond his control, the action will not survive; that, as a general
rule, assignability and survivality of causes of action are convertible terms.
(Selden vs. Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, 239, 111., 67, 87, N. E., 860.) * *
* It appears from the record that the wife is the beneficiary under this
insurance policy. It is conceded that she is the only one that could recover
under it and that the representative of the deceased, after his death, would not
have any interest in said policy, hence the action could not survive to the
“heir, devisee, executor or administrator” under section 10 of the Abatement
Act.'”

In view of the foregoing, we are of the opinion and so hold that the rule is,
not that a mandamus proceeding as a personal action abates upon the death of the
relator in the absence of statutory provisions to the contrary, but that it may
abate or not depending upon the nature of the right sought to be enforced
thereby. In other words, the nature of the right of action sought to be enforced
by mandamus is a material factor in determining whether or not it abates upon
the death of the petitioner. If the right of action involved is entirely
personal and, consequently, does not survive upon the death of the party to his
representative, the action of mandamus to enforce it abates upon the death of
the relator. But if the right sought to be enforced is not personal as, for
instance, an action of mandamus to compel a judge to act in an action for
recovery of a real or personal property, or a register of deed to inscribe a
real estate in the relator’s name, the mandamus proceeding does not abate upon
the latter’s death.

The question to be determined by this Court in the present case is,
therefore, whether or not the right of the petitioners, as offended party, to
subscribe and file a complaint of falsification of public documents against
certain public officers, and compel by mandamus the respondent judge or his
successor in the office to practice the corresponding preliminary investigation,
is entirely personal and does not survive upon the death of the said petitioners
to their representative. If it is not personal and survives or is not
extinguished by the death of the petitioners, the now pending mandamus
proceeding is not abated, and may be continued by their representative in
substitution for the deceased. But if it is entirely personal to the
petitioners, or the latter could not, by contract or otherwise, place it beyond
their control, it is extinguished by the death of the relators, and the latters’
action of mandamus abates and can not be continued by their legal representative
under section 17, Rule 3, above mentioned.

Under the Rules of Court relating to criminal procedure, all criminal actions
shall be prosecuted under the direction and control of the fiscal, because the
people represented by the government is the party in interest to prosecute
offenses or crimes and secure the conviction of the offenders in order to
preserve the public order. But where a crime or offense not only disturbs the
public order but also injures the property right of an individual, the latter,
as offended party, is authorized by law to subscribe and file a complaint and
prosecute the criminal action, although subject to the direction and control of
the fiscal. (Sec. 4, Rule 106, Rules of Court.) The Rules of Court do not
directly define the meaning of “offended party,” but from the provision of
section 11, Rule 106, of the said Rules, it may clearly be inferred that
offended party is the person against whom or against whose property the crime
was committed.

Under the American system, the prosecution of public offenses is reserved to
the representative of the government and the individual citizen can not bring an
action for that purpose, for he is protected by his right to bring a civil
action for damages caused by the crime. The old General Orders No. 58, from
which the Rules of Court on criminal procedure were taken, has compromised only
with the private penal action of the injured party, but with that of the latter
alone,—not with the action which under the . former law on the subject of
criminal procedure might be brought by any citizen who might desire to aid the
action of the Government. (United States vs. Municipal Council of Santa Cruz de
Malabon, 1 Phil., 731, 733.) But, while one of the reasons in maintaining the
private penal action of the injured party himself, was the right of the latter
to the civil obligation of the defendant resulting from a crime or misdemeanor,
the right granted by law to the injured party to subscribe and file a complaint
against the offender, is not made to depend upon his right of action to recover
from the offender the latter’s civil liability arising out of the crime or
offense in each particular case. Because, although no civil action may arise out
of an offense, the injured party may subscribe and file a complaint, as in
bigamy and other offenses in which the injury or damage caused to the victim can
not be compensated in terms of money. And even though a public offense causes
damage or injury to and recoverable by the aggrieved party, and the latter
waives or reserves the right to institute separately the civil action under
section 1 of Rule 107, the injured party is entitled or preserves his right to
subscribe and file a compln’mz against the accused, because of his being the
offended party.

This right conferred by law upon the offended party is purely
or entirely statutory and personal, and upon his death it does not survive to
his representative. The heirs of the deceased can not exercise the same right or
continue the proceeding instituted by the decedent, although they may, as any
other person, inform the prosecuting attorney of the commission of the crime or
offense, because they are not and can not be considered the offended party. As
above stated, the right granted by the Spanish Code of Criminal Procedure to any
citizen who might desire to aid the action of the Government, to bring a penal
action, was abolished by the rules of criminal procedure contained in General
Order No. 58 and its amendments.

DISSENTING

PERFECTO, J., with whom concurs PARAS,
J.:

On June 28, 1944, petitioners commenced a criminal action by filing directly
with the Court of First Instance of Tayabas a complaint charging several
officials with the offense of falsification of public documents which was
docketed as criminal case No. 158 of said court.

Petitioners allege that Judge Vicente del Rosario of the Court of First
Instance of Tayabas issued on June 30, 1944, an order commanding the clerk of
said court to return the complaint to petitioners with instructions either to
file the case with the Ministry of Justice or the Bureau of Public Prosecution
which should first be heard before the suit is entertained by the court or to
file said criminal complaint with the justice of the peace court. On July 3,
1944, petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied by the
respondent judge on July 14, 1944, ruling that only an information signed by the
fiscal and not a complaint signed by the offended party may be filed with the
Court of First Instance directly.

Alleging that the lower court has violated the provisions of section 4 of
Rule 108, section 4 of Rule 106, and section 1 of Rule 124, petitioners pray
that judgment be rendered commanding the lower court to conduct a preliminary
investigation in said criminal case No. 15S.

The rule provisions invoked by petitioners are as follows:

“Upon complaint or information filed directly with the Court of First
Instance, the judge thereof shall conduct a preliminary investigation in the
manner provided in the following sections, and should he find a reasonable
ground to believe that the defendant has committed the offense charged, he shall
issue a warrant for his arrest and try the case on the merits.” (Sec. 4, Rule
106.)

“All criminal actions either commenced by complaint or by information shall
be prosecuted -under the direction and control of the fiscal.” (Sec. 4, Rule
IOC.)

“Courts of justice shall be always open, except on legal holidays, for the
filing cf any pleading or other proper papers, for the trial of cases, and for
the issuance of orders or rendition of .iudrrments. Justice shall be impartially
administered without unnecessary delay.” (Sec. 1, Rule 124.)

On August 23, 1944, Solicitor General Sixto de la Ccsta and Solicitor Vicente
Arguclles filed the following answer to the petition:

“Comes now the undersigned counsel for the respondent Judge of the Court of
First Instance of Tayabas, and respectfully states:

“That under the Rules of Court a criminal complaint may be filed directly
with the Court of First Instance by the offended party and that upon the
complaint filed, it is the mandatory duty of the Judge thereof to conduct a
preliminary investigation in the manner provided by said rules. (Rule 108,
section 4 of Rules of Court.)

“That it is a uniform practice that when a complaint is laid before a
magistrate be he a judge of the Court of First Instance or a Justice of the
Peace, ‘he must make a preliminary investigation, and if he is satisfied that
the crime complained of has been committed and that there is reasonable ground
to believe that the party charged has committed it, he must take the action the
law requires’ (United States vs. Banzuela and Banzuela, 31 Phil., 564; People
vs. Solon, 47 Phil., 443, 453).

“That it is error on the part of the respondent Judge to order the return of
the complaint filed in the case in question to the aggrieved party for reasons
stated in the pronouncements made in the orders of the court of June li), 1944
and July 14, 1944; and that said complaint could have been entertained in court
without prejudice to endorsing the matter to the Bureau of Public Prosecution
for such action as said office may deem proper.

“Wherefore, it is submitted that the orders of the Court of First Instance of
June 30, 1944, and July 14, 1944, subject of1 the present proceedings are not in
accord with law, and that the petitioners arc entitled to the remedy sought in
these proceedings.”

Emilio Guevarra and Ciriaco Guevarra, sons of petitioner Fernando Guevarra
and brothers of Marcos Guevarra, being co-accused in the criminal case for
murder wherein the alleged falsification of public documents has been committed,
filed in this Court a motion to prosecute this case in. substitution of
petitioners Fernando and Marcos Guevarra who, according to the Director of
Prisons, died while detained in the Bilibid Prison, in Muntinlupa.

The majority voted to deny the motion for substitution and to dismiss the
petition, the latter notwithstanding the fact that the Solicitor General
himself, more than two years ago, had filed an answer agreeing with the petition
because “the petitioners are entitled to the remedy sought in these
proceedings.”

The majority contend that the right of petitioners to file a complaint
charging the commission of a crime is personal and abated upon their death; and
that the cause of action, upon which this proceeding for mandamus is based, is
also personal and, for that reason, did not survive to the heirs or legal
representatives of said petitioners, because upon their death the complaint
filed by them with the respondent court abated.

The whole architectural structure of the majority’s theory is built, not upon
the rocky foundation of any legal principle—either universally accepted or just
newly discovered by a pioneering juridical or philosophical genius, not even
upon any plausible legal maxim invented by a resourceful Lord Coke in support of
a just or equitable solution of a controversy—but upon the haziness and broad
meaning of an adjective; “personal.”

The majority’s syllogism starts from the following major premise: All
things personal abate and do not survive ivith the subject’s death, and are
intransmissible.

The thesis can not stand the least analysis. Everybody knows that almost all,
if not all, things transmitted by the death of a person to his heirs are, or may
be, designated as “personal.” There are, in the first place, things which are
classified as strictly personal goods, such as, furniture, money, shares, and
other movable property. Even lands and buildings are “personal” property, as
distinguished from conjugal or communal property. The paraphernal estate of a
deceased wife is her “personal” property.

The consequences to which the majority’s thesis leads are too obvious and too
obviously senseless that we feel it needless to expose further its absolute lack
of any foundation on reason or common sense, on logic or experience.

Now, if the majority, by adopting a novel and arbitrary lexicon, should want
the adjective limited to a kind of personal things which, by their very nature,
die with the subject’s death, then the major premise of their syllogism must be
restated to convey that sense.

But then such kind of personal things shall exclusively and absolutely
comprise alone the organs and other parts of the physical body which dies at his
death. Of course, they will not include his spirit, his thoughts, or the written
words in which he had expressed them. Those thoughts, if of permanent value,
such as those that sprang from the minds of great men, like Rizal or Mabini, or
from the minds of great thinkers, never die and are transmitted to coming
generations for mankind to cherish until the end of time.

Even the destructible parts of the physical body of a dead person,
notwithstanding their superlative personal character, remain transmissible. The
devilish leaders of Nazi Germany took full advantage of this fact at Maidanek
where the remains of millions of men, women and children they massacred were
used to fertilise their orchards and gardens.

The right of filing a complaint for the commission of a crime and the right
to enforce that right by mandamus can not, surely, be identified with any
physical limb or organ of the subject of those rights.

If by designating them as “personal” the majority wanted to convey the idea
that they are exclusively personal, from which they concluded that they are
intransmissible, they must feel that their theory is completely indefensible,
when they had to seek refuge under an sphynxian silence, supplying the lack of
ground and truth of their theory with the emphasis of an unreasoned assertion,
made with the dogmatism of absolutists who would not countenance any discussion
of, and would frown with Olympic disdain at, the challenge of an argument.
“Magister dixit ila est.”

Section 2 of Rule 106 is invoked by the majority to support the proposition
that the right to file a complaint for the commission of a crime is personal and
is used as a board from which to jump to the conclusion that it is also
intransmissible.

They assume that because said section defines the complaint as “a sworn
written statement charging a person with an offense, subscribed by the offended
party, any peace officer or other employee of the government,” no other party
can sign or file it.

Evidently, the majority have lost sight of the provisions of section 5 of
Rule 106, regarding sufficiency of criminal complaint or information, which
reads as follows:

“SEC. 5. Sufficiency of complaint or information.—A complaint or
information is sufficient if it states tlie name of the defendant; the
designation of the offense by the statute; the acts or omissions complained of
as constituting the offense; the name of the offended party; the approximate
time of the commission of the offense, and the place -wherein the offense was
committed.

“When the offense is committed by more than one person, all of them shall be
included in the complaint or information.”

It can be seen that, while section 2 of Rule 106 defines complaint as a
“sworn written statement charging a person with an offense, subscribed by the
offended party, any peace officer or other employee of the government or
governmental institution in charge of the enforcement or execution of the law
violated,” section 5 thereof specifies the essential elements which would make a
complaint sufficient. Among said elements, the signature “by the offended party,
any officer or other employee of the government” is not mentioned. In other
words, under section 5 of Rule 106, a complaint is sufficient although it does
not bear the signature of the “offended party, any peace officer or other
employee of the government.” Said section admits even the possibility of a
complaint not bearing the signature, not only of the persons mentioned in
section 2, but also of any other person.

It must be so under the philosophy underlying our system of criminal law
which, as it happens in all enlightened countries, starts frcm the principle
that all criminal offenses undermines the social stability and orderliness of
society and that the real offended party, aside from the actual victims
themselves, is the people. An unmistakable statement of that philosophy
underlying our system of criminal law appears in section 1 of Rule 106, which
provides:

“SECTION 1. Commencement of criminal action.—All criminal actions
must be commenced either by complaint or information in the name of the People
of the Philippines against all persons who appear to be responsible
therefor.”

The error of the majority in insisting, in the present case, that the
complaint for falsification of public documents ¦ in question did not survive
upon the death of complainants Fernando and Marcos Guevarra, and in denying
their surviving sons and brothers, Emilio and Ciriaco Guevarra, the right to
continue these mandamus proceedings and to prosecute the complaint filed by the
two deceased, starts from the primitive concept that the crime had offended
exclusively the victims and that the victims are the only one’s entitled to
prosecute the culprits. All cultured persons ought to know that such an
underlying concept is outworn and has been discarded, and is outgrown by a more
advanced system of philosophy in criminal law. The fact, established by
sociological studies and researches, that the tribes of remote antiquity would
make reprisals and would even start tribal wars for offense committed against
one of their members, is a conclusive proof that the primitive concept which we
are refuting could have only been accepted before the existence of any organized
human community.

In the present case, the sons and brothers of the deceased complainants,
Emilio and Cirilo Guevarra, are, after all, as offended parties themselves as
the deceased for two reasons:

1. Because, as sons and brothers of the victims of the alleged falsifications,
   they suffered almost as much as the deceased from the effects of the
   falsifications, as it is only natural to persons so closely related.

2. Because they themselves were later included as ac cused in the criminal
   proceedings in which the alleged falsifications were committed, as alleged
   co-authors of the murder imputed to the deceased, and the harm inflicted upon
   them by said proceedings appears self-evident, con sidering the fact that we had
   only recently, by unanimous decision, acquitted them of the crime charged in the
   in formation. (People vs. Guevarra, p. 415, ante.)

We vote for the granting of the motion for substitution and of the prayer of
the petition, concurred in by the Solicitor General himself in representation of
the respondent Court of First Instance of Tayabas. The fact that the rules have
been violated by the lower court more than two years ago and the relief sought
in the petition, notwithstanding the Solicitor General’s answer, has not been
acted upon for that long period of time, instead of lessening petitioners’ right
to seek the relief prayed for makes stronger the plea for said relief. The law
must be complied with. No excuses, no compromises, no circumventions should be
allowed to defeat the unmistakable mandates of the law. Much less when in the
complaint for falsification of public documents, which was illegally rejected by
the lower court, the high interests of public morals and society are at stake.
The fact that the crime was allegedly perpetrated by government officials,
entrusted with the duty to keep watch over the law and to prosecute all kinds of
lawlessness, makes more imperative that the petition should not be so lightly
whitewashed.

The stern attitude of the law against all erring persons must not be relaxed
because the alleged culprits are law officers. No violation of the law must be
countenanced only because it will protect the erring officials or because the
law is invoked by the weak, the defenseless, by one who is under indictment for
an abhorrent crime, or by a moral leper, spurned by all his fellow citizens. The
law is incompatible with the iniquities of discrimination.

Motion for substitution denied; petition for writ of mandamus
abated.