ESPERANZA VALENCIA, PETITIONER, VS. WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION COMMISSION AND THE CITY OF MANILA, RESPONDENTS.

Valencia versus Workmen's Compensation Commission

The Case

This is the case of Esperanza Valencia against the Workmen's Compensation Commission and the City of Manila. Esperanza Valencia, a casual street sweeper employed by the City of Manila, contracted pulmonary tuberculosis in the course of her work and was then separated from the service. When she finally filed a claim for disability compensation, the Commission dismissed it. She asked the Supreme Court to review that dismissal. The case matters because it shows how the law protects the working man: it teaches the presumption that a sickness arose out of or was aggravated by the employment, and it shows how the Court reasons from the chronic, slow-moving nature of tuberculosis to defeat a claim that the illness came only after separation.

Procedural History

Esperanza Valencia filed her notice of sickness and claim for compensation with the Regional Office of the Department of Labor against the City of Manila. The City contested the claim, and after a hearing on the merits the acting referee found the claim meritorious and awarded her disability benefits, an attorney's fee, and the Commission's fee. The City of Manila elevated the case to the Workmen's Compensation Commission. The Commission reversed the referee and dismissed the claim for failure of the claimant to substantiate it. Valencia then sought review by the Supreme Court. The Court treated her petition for review as a special civil action, considered the comment as an answer, and required the parties to submit memoranda. The case is therefore a review by the Supreme Court of the Commission's decision.

Facts

Esperanza Valencia worked for the City of Manila as a casual laborer, specifically as a street sweeper, from 1966 until the thirty-first of July, 1971. For almost five years she was exposed to dust, dirt, the heat of the sun, and inclement weather. In the course of that employment she developed tuberculosis. Her services were terminated by a memorandum from the Assistant Secretary to the Mayor, which stated that, in the interest of the public service and upon the advice of the examining physician that she should take a rest to avoid ill health, her temporary appointment would not be renewed.

Unaware of her rights under the law, Valencia waited about a year and a half after her separation before filing her notice of sickness and claim for compensation, on the twenty-sixth of January, 1973. She had been treated by a physician from the third of August, 1971, just three days after she stopped working, up to the fifteenth of February, 1972, and the medical findings showed minimal pulmonary tuberculosis.

The acting referee awarded her compensation. The Workmen's Compensation Commission reversed, holding that there was no evidence that she was suffering from a disabling ailment before her termination, and that the medical findings showed her tuberculosis was minimal and probably inactive, suggesting it arose after her separation. The City also claimed she was separated because her office was abolished, a claim the Court found belied by the memorandum itself.

Issues

• Whether or not the Commission erred in finding that the claimant's tuberculosis arose only after her separation from the service.
• Whether or not the claimant's illness is compensable as one contracted in the course of, or aggravated by, the nature of her employment.
• Whether or not the claimant was relieved of the burden of proving causation once she established that the illness supervened during her employment.

Applicable Provisions

Section 2 of the Workmen's Compensation Act, as amended, provides:

When an employee suffers personal injury from any accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, or contracts tuberculosis or other illness directly caused by such employment, or either aggravated by or the result of the nature of such employment, his employer shall pay compensation in the sums and to the persons hereinafter specified.

This is the very provision that makes tuberculosis contracted in or aggravated by the employment a compensable sickness.

Section 44 of the Workmen's Compensation Act provides:

In any proceeding for the enforcement of the claim for compensation under the Act, it shall be presumed in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary that the claim comes within the provisions of this Act.

This presumption shifts the burden to the employer to prove that the sickness was not caused or aggravated by the work.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the Commission's conclusion was patently erroneous. The physician examined Valencia on the third of August, 1971, just three days after she stopped working, and already found her suffering from tuberculosis, though in its minimal stage. Her ailment could not simply have appeared on the third day of her separation. The Court noted that tuberculosis is a chronic infection, that its incubation period runs from two to ten weeks, and that it is not an instantaneous disease but an imperceptible germ disease whose incipient stage may not be readily discovered.

On the second issue, the Court held that her employment, which exposed her to dirt, excessive dust, and sudden changes of temperature, contributed to her contracting the disease and lowered her resistance. Manual labor done for long periods in a dust-laden atmosphere tends to produce fibrosis of the lungs, which weakens resistance to latent tuberculosis and reactivates the infection, and this justifies compensation. The memorandum advising her to rest upon the physician's advice was the best corroborative evidence of her state of health at the time of separation.

On the third issue, the Court held that the claimant was relieved of the burden of proving causation once the illness was shown to have arisen in the course of the employment. Under Section 44, it is presumed that the claim comes within the Act, and this presumption places on the employer the burden of proving that the sickness was not, and could not be, caused or aggravated by the nature of the work. The Court described the law as a piece of social legislation conceived under the doctrine of man's humanity to man, meant to secure the working man and his dependents against becoming objects of charity.

Doctrine

Once a claimant establishes that the illness supervened during the time of employment, there is a rebuttable presumption that the illness arose out of, or was at least aggravated by, the employment, and the claimant is relieved of the burden of proving causation. The employer bears the burden of proving that the sickness was not, and could not be, caused or aggravated by the nature of the work. Tuberculosis is not an instantaneous disease; its incipient stage may not be readily discovered, so a finding of the disease shortly after separation supports the conclusion that it was contracted during employment. Work in a dust-laden atmosphere that weakens resistance to latent tuberculosis justifies compensation under Section 2 of the Workmen's Compensation Act.

Disposition

The Supreme Court set aside the decision of the Workmen's Compensation Commission and affirmed the decision of the acting referee awarding compensation to Esperanza Valencia, with costs against the City of Manila.

Remember This

The single line to memorize is that once the illness supervenes during employment, it is presumed to have arisen out of or been aggravated by that employment, and the employer must rebut it with substantial evidence. Examiners use this case on the presumption of compensability and on tuberculosis as a chronic, non-instantaneous disease in workmen's compensation claims.