EMETERIO ORBE, PETITIONER-APPELLANT, VS. HON. ENRIQUE B. INTING, IN HIS CAPACITY AS JUDGE, CITY COURT, BRANCH II; FLORENTINA BALCITA AND PANFILO BALCITA, RESPONDENTS-APPELLEES.

We dismiss as frivolous petitioner-appellant’s appeal from the
lower court’s order of dismissal of his petition for a writ of certiorari
against respondent city court’s order denying his mo­tion for production or
inspection of documents allegedly to aid him in preparing his defense as
defendant in a simple collection case.

On July 5, 1967,
private respondents, the Balcita spouses as owners of
Ine’s Store” in Davao City,
had filed a collection case against petitioner as defendant before respondent
city court, for merchandise worth P3,112.70* purchased by petitioner on a cash
basis.  The purchases were evidenced by
three checks totalling P2,183.50
issued by petitioner as payment, which were however dishonored by the drawee bank for lack of funds and a purchase order for
P928.50 likewise issued by petitioner.

Petitioner, in his answer of July 27, 1967 to the complaint, admitted having issued the
rubber checks, but claimed that he did so only to accommodate certain unnamed
persons, who, he claimed, were the actual buyers of the merchandise and debtors
of respondents -sellers.

After several postponements of trial obtained by petitioner, the
trial of the case was reset for trial for the fourth time on Sep­tember 22, 1967.  Petitioner then filed on September 15, 1967 a
motion for the production and copying of all the documents, par­ticularly the
invoices, evidencing the sale of the merchandise to him, and to set the time
and place and manner of making the in­spection and taking copies thereof,
invoking the provisions of Rule 27, section 1(a) of the Rules of Court.^[1]
Respondents, in their opposition thereto, attached true copies of the three
rubber checks and purchase order issued by petitioner.  By virtue thereof, res­pondent city court
thereupon denied on September 21, 1967
petitioner’s motion for production, ruling furthermore that no good cause would
be served by production of the supposed invoices sought by petitioner.

In an obvious dilatory move to forestall the trial of the case
set for September 22, 1967,
petitioner filed on the same date the present action for certiorari with the
Court of First Instance of Davao, to annul respondent
court’s denial of his motion for produc­tion and to restrain it from continuing
with the scheduled trial.

The lower court heard the parties on September 27, 1967 on
petitioner’s motion for a preliminary injunction and on the same date issued
its denial order, ruling that “this court cannot find a valid or
justifiable reason to grant this petition, there being no grave abuse of discretion
performed by the Respondent Judge in deny­ing the motion in question and that
he acted properly within the limits of his jurisdiction by exercising his sound
discretion in resolving the motion presented to him for consideration.  Besides the petitioner does not satisfy this
court in his explanation to prove that he has a clear, undisputable right to
the relief demanded and that a great or irreparable injury would result to the
applicant if respondent Judge would continue the act and try said Civil Case No.
1116-B.”

Thereafter, on October 12, 1967, upon respondents’ motion and the
lower court’s finding on the issues reiterated anew by the parties that the
petition lacked merit for the reasons stated in its previous order of September
27, 1967, the lower court ordered the dismissal of the petition.

Petitioner, nevertheless, filed the present appeal.

It is evident that no error of law, much less any grave abuse of
discretion, was committed by respondent court in denying petitioner-appellant’s
motion for production of documents, since respondents had already furnished him
with true copies of the evidences of his indebtedness consisting of the three
rubber checks and the purchase order and there was no good cause shown by him
for insisting on production before trial of the supposed sales invoices.

The purpose of the rule, which dates back to our old Code of
Civil Procedure (Act 190), “is to furnish litigants with a speedy and
summary mode of obtaining evidence necessary to the immediate re­solution of a
controversy before the court.”^[2]
The application for production of the desired documents, under the rule’s
requirements, “should describe them with sufficient certainty and state
positively: (1) the existence of the described documents; (2) the possession or
con­trol of them by the adverse party, his servant, or agent; (3) the in­formation
wanted; and (4) that the books and papers referred to, contain such entries and
that the latter are material and necessary to a proper determination of the
issues involved.”^[3]

Petitioner utterly failed to meet the rule’s requirements as to
purpose, existence of the documents, materiality and necessity.  The trial of the case was already scheduled
on September 22, 1967 (his motion having been denied on the eve thereof) and he
could just as speedily and expeditiously accomplish at the trial what he
purportedly sought through the production of the invoices, to wit, that the
unnamed persons whom he allegedly accommodated as the actual buyers had
manifested to him that they had not re­ceived all the goods requisitioned by
his purchase orders but only so much thereof as appeared in the invoices.

Yet the trial was actually held by respondent court on Sep­tember
23, 1967 as scheduled with respondents having presented their evidence and
documentary exhibits consisting of the three rubber checks and purchase order
issued by petitioner, and the record fails to show that petitioner ever
questioned respondents on the alleged invoices, or present secondary evidence
thereof, or present the testimonial evidence either of himself or of the
unnamed actual buyers allegedly accommodated by him, with re­ference to his
purported defense.  It should furthermore
be noted that if such invoices had been in fact issued (contrary to what ap­pears
on the record), the originals or purchaser’s copies thereof would have been
delivered at the time of purchase and in the or­dinary course of business to
petitioner or his representative(s), and discovery procedures do not permit a
party to ask for the production from the adverse party of evidence which he has
already under his possession or control.

Respondent court eventually rendered under date of January 17, 1968 its judgment in
respondents’ favor, with the case having been submitted for decision upon
petitioner having failed to present his own evidence, after having secured two
continuances of the trial, the last of which was for November 10, 1967.^[4]
Petitioner ap­pealed respondent court’s adverse decision to the court of first
instance, where he properly should raise on appeal the very same questions he
unwarrantedly raises in this special civil action.  But no mention whatever of his appeal is made
by petitioner in his brief here filed on October 31, 1968, where he obstinately
insists on his gratuitous notion that ‘for the showing of a good cause under
the law, an allegation in the motion that the documents sought to be produced
and inspected are necessary for the preparation of movant’s
defense is enough”^[5]
and would make of the trial court a mere automaton without control of the
proceedings and without discretion to rule on the materiality and necessity of
the documents sought to be produced.

 We find under the
circumstances the present appeal was but a frivolous tactic vainly resorted to
by petitioner to delay prompt resolution of the collection case and to prolong
litigation unnecessarily, unworthy of counsel who is bound to certify as an
officer of the court by virtue of his signature on the pleadings that there is
good ground to support them and that they are not interposed for delay.  Such conduct deserves condemnation as the
Court has pointed out in several cases,^[6]
because it is a glaring misuse of the right to resort to the extraordinary
remedy of certiorari in proper cases of grave abuse of discretion by an
inferior court and needlessly wastes the time that courts could well devote to
meritorious cases.  Fortunately, since
the enactment of Republic Act 5440 on September 9, 1968, frivolous appeals such
as the case at bar may no longer be elevated to the Court as a matter of right,
but have to be sought through a petition for review on certiorari, which
permits the Court to weed out and peremptorily dis­miss such unmeritorious
appeals.

WHEREFORE, the lower court’s dismissal order is affirmed
and petitioner-appellant’s coun­sel shall pay treble costs in both
instances.  Let this decision be noted in
the personal record of said counsel.

SO ORDERED.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Dizon, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Castro, Fernando, Barredo,
Villamor, and Makasiar, JJ., concur.

* A differential
of P0.70, after adding up the items, is not ac­counted for, and is probably due
to clerical error in the record submitted.

^[1] Section 1. Motion for production or
inspection; order. – Upon motion of any party showing good cause therefor and upon notice to all other parties, the court in
which an action is pending may (a) order any party to produce and permit the
inspection and copying or photographing, by or on behalf of the moving party,
of any designated documents, papers, books, accounts, letters, photo­graphs,
objects or tangible things, not privileged, which constitute or contain
evidence material to any matter involved in the action and which are in his
possession, custody or control; x x x

^[2] 2 Martin’s Rules of Court, 2d. Ed., p. 98.

^[3] Idem,
p. 100.

^[4]
Respondents’ brief, Annex “A” and p. 6.

^[5]
Petitioner-Appellant’s brief, p. 9.

^[6] Uypuangco vs. Equitable Bank, 27 SCRA 1272 (Apr. 30, 1969); J. P. Juan &
Sons, Inc, vs. Lianga Industries, Inc., 28
SCRA 807 (July 28, 1969); Pajares vs. Abad Santos,
30 SCRA 748 (Nov. 29, 1969).