MAERSK-FILIPINAS CREWING, INCORPORATED, MAILYN P. BORILLO AND COPENHAGEN, PETITIONERS, VS. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS COMMISSION (FIFTH DIVISION) AND ALFREDO B. BAUTISTA, RESPONDE…

Maersk-Filipinas Crewing versus National Labor Relations Commission

The Case

This is a petition for certiorari filed by Maersk-Filipinas Crewing, Incorporated, its officer Mailyn Borillo, and its foreign principal Copenhagen against the National Labor Relations Commission and the seafarer Alfredo Bautista. The petitioners ask the Supreme Court to annul the Commission's decision and resolution awarding Bautista total permanent disability benefits and sickness allowance, charging grave abuse of discretion. The case matters because it settles, for the Bar and for practice, three questions every maritime labor examination turns on: whether the Labor Code concept of total permanent disability applies to seafarers under the POEA Standard Contract, whether the company-designated physician's timely disability grading forecloses a total permanent award, and how a labor tribunal resolves conflicting medical assessments when no third doctor was ever appointed.

Procedural History

Bautista filed a complaint before the Labor Arbiter for total permanent disability benefits under the AMOSUP Collective Bargaining Agreement, balance of sick wages, damages, and attorney's fees. The Labor Arbiter ruled in his favor, granting the money claims except damages, but anchored the disability award on the POEA Standard Contract rather than the Collective Bargaining Agreement, ordering the respondents jointly and severally to pay sixty thousand dollars as total permanent disability benefit, one thousand one hundred seventy dollars as balance in sick wages, plus ten percent of the total award as attorney's fees. Both parties appealed to the National Labor Relations Commission. The Commission affirmed the Labor Arbiter in all respects except that it deleted the award of attorney's fees, and it denied the petitioners' motion for reconsideration. The petitioners then went up to the Supreme Court by petition for certiorari on the ground of grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.

Facts

On the eighth of April 2010, Maersk-Filipinas Crewing re-employed Alfredo Bautista as an Able Seaman, for and on behalf of its foreign principal Copenhagen, for six months at a monthly salary of five hundred eighty-five dollars, under a contract executed and approved pursuant to the POEA Standard Terms and Conditions Governing the Employment of Filipino Seafarers On-Board Ocean-Going Vessels.

In May 2010, while working on board the vessel, Bautista suffered severe back pain and numbness on his right leg radiating to his feet. Medication did not help. In the second week of June 2010 he was admitted to a local hospital in Lithuania, diagnosed with spinal injury, and declared unfit for work. He was repatriated on the twentieth of June 2010 and, the following day, reported to his employer, which referred him to its accredited physician, Doctor Natalio Alegre the Second. Doctor Alegre initially diagnosed low back pain secondary to a herniated disc and referred him to a rehabilitation specialist and for a magnetic resonance imaging of his lumbosacral spine. In July 2010 he was examined by an orthopedic specialist and underwent radiology and imaging at Saint Luke's Medical Center, and from August to September 2010 he was subjected to physical therapy and medication by the company's accredited doctors.

His condition did not improve. On the twenty-fourth of September 2010, Doctor Alegre issued a disability assessment of Grade 8, or two-thirds loss of motion on lifting power of the trunk, under the POEA Standard Contract, advising continued therapy and medication. Unconvinced, Bautista consulted Doctor Manuel Jacinto, Junior, who issued a medical certificate dated the eighth of October 2010 certifying central disc herniation classified as total and permanent disability and declaring him unfit for sea duties. His claim for total permanent disability benefits was denied, so on the fourteenth of October 2010 he filed the complaint.

Issues

• Whether or not the medical opinion of the company-designated physicians should be accorded superior evidentiary weight over the assessment of the seafarer's doctor of choice.
• Whether or not the Labor Code definition of total permanent disability applies to seafarers claiming under the POEA Standard Contract.
• Whether or not the timely issuance of the company-designated physician's disability assessment within one hundred twenty days negates the total and permanent character of the seafarer's injury.
• Whether or not the petitioners proved full payment of the balance of the seafarer's sickness allowance.

Applicable Provisions

Section 20, paragraph B, of the POEA Standard Contract provides:

B. COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS FOR INJURY OR ILLNESS: The liabilities of the employer when the seafarer suffers work-related injury or illness during the term of his contract are as follows: x x x 3. Upon sign-off from the vessel for medical treatment, the seafarer is entitled to sickness allowance equivalent to his basic wage until he is declared fit to work or the degree of permanent disability has been assessed by the company-designated physician but in no case shall this period exceed one hundred twenty (120) days. For this purpose, the seafarer shall submit himself to a post-employment medical examination by a company-designated physician within three working days upon his return except when he is physically incapacitated to do so, in which case, a written notice to the agency within the same period is deemed as compliance. Failure of the seafarer to comply with the mandatory reporting requirement shall result in his forfeiture of the right to claim the above benefits. If a doctor appointed by the seafarer disagrees with the assessment, a third doctor may be agreed jointly between the employer and the seafarer. The third doctor's decision shall be final and binding on both parties.

This provision supplies both the conditions for compensability and the mechanism for conflicting assessments that the Court applies here.

Article 192 of the Labor Code, as discussed in the decision, provides:

Article 192. Permanent Total Disability. (a) Under this Title, the following disabilities are deemed total and permanent: (1) Temporary total disability lasting continuously for more than one hundred twenty days, except as otherwise provided for in the Rules.

The Court holds that this concept of total permanent disability applies with equal force to seafarers, so that inability to work beyond one hundred twenty days is deemed total and permanent.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court ruled that the company-designated physician's assessment is not final, binding, or conclusive on seafarers, labor tribunals, or courts. The findings of both physicians must first be evaluated on their inherent merits. Where no third doctor was appointed to settle the disagreement, the more equitable solution is to review the merits of both assessments rather than to hastily and blindly accept the company doctor's findings. On the merits, the Court upheld the doctor of choice's assessment as more consistent with the seafarer's true condition, because it considered his earning capabilities and the degree and extent of his injury, and because disability is understood more on the loss of earning capacity than on the medical significance of the disability.

On the second issue, the Court rejected the argument that Article 192 of the Labor Code is inapplicable to seafarers. Entitlement to disability benefits is governed not only by medical findings but by law and by contract, and the applicability of the Labor Code provision on permanent disability is a settled matter. The Court quoted the statutory definition it applied:

Permanent disability is the inability of a worker to perform his or her job for more than one hundred twenty (120) days, regardless of whether he or she loses the use of any part of the body; while a total disability means the disablement of the worker to earn wages in the same kind of work he or she was trained or accustomed to perform, or any other kind of work which a person of his or her mentality and attainments could do.

On the third issue, the Court held that the date of the disability grading does not determine the nature or degree of the injury; what determines it is the seafarer's condition after sustaining the injury. The fact that the company physician issued the grading ninety-six days after repatriation, within the one hundred twenty day period, did not negate the total and permanent character of the injury, since the seafarer remained disabled from returning to his usual work.

On the fourth issue, the Court held that one who pleads payment has the burden of proving it, and the burden rests on the employer because the payrolls and records are in its custody and absolute control. The petitioners adduced none of these documents, so the balance of the sickness allowance remained due.

Doctrine

First, the Labor Code concept of total permanent disability applies to Filipino seafarers under the POEA Standard Contract. Total disability does not mean absolute helplessness; what is compensated is not the injury but the incapacity to work resulting in the impairment of earning capacity. Second, the company-designated physician's assessment is not final and binding; the seafarer may seek a second opinion, and where no third doctor is jointly appointed, the tribunal weighs both assessments on their inherent merits. Third, the timing of the disability grading does not control; what controls is the seafarer's condition after the injury, and if he remains unable to return to his customary work after one hundred twenty days, the disability is total and permanent. Fourth, in claims for sickness allowance, the employer bears the burden of proving payment.

Disposition

The petition was denied, and the decision and resolution of the National Labor Relations Commission were sustained, leaving the seafarer entitled to total permanent disability benefits and the balance of his sickness allowance.

Remember This

Memorize the line that what is compensated is not the injury but the incapacity to work resulting in the impairment of one's earning capacity, and that the company doctor's grading is never final and binding. Examiners use this case to test the seafarer's right to a second opinion, the effect of the one hundred twenty day period, and the employer's burden of proving payment of sickness allowance.