G.R. No. L-3875. July 06, 1950
UNITED STATES TOBACCO CORPORATION, PETITIONER, VS. RUFINO LUNA, IN HIS CAPACITY AS IMPORT CONTROL COMMISSIONER, IMPORT CONTROL BOARD, AND ALFREDO JACINTO, IN HIS CAPACITY AS ACT…
TUASON, J.:
Act authorizing the President of the Philippines to establish a system
of import control by regulating imports of non-essential or luxury
articles, creating an import control board, authorizing the issuance of
rules and regulations to carry into effect such controls and penalizing
violations: of this Act.” By virtue of the powers vested in him by
this enactment, the President, on November 29, 1949 issued Executive
Order No.295 revising the rules and regulations on control of imports
of non-essential and luxury articles into the Philippines as provided
in Republic Act No. 330. Sections 1 and 12 of this Executive Order read
as follows:
“Sec 1. From and after the date of effectivity of
this Order, no article included in the list referred to in Section 3
hereof shall be imported into the Philippines without an import license
duly issued by the Import Control Board in accordance with the
provisions of this Order. Such license shall be signed “By authority of
the President: Import Control-Board.’“Sec. 12. Importers
must obtain an import license for every foreign order placed after the
date of effectivity of this Executive Order unless the articles to be
imported are not subject to restriction under the provisions of this
Order. Articles ordered after said date without an import license shall
not be released by customs to the importer and shall be confiscated by
the Import Control Board.”
It will be observed that no import license was required for leaf
tobacco in this Executive Order. Nevertheless, Harry S. Stone hill,
President of the United States Tobacco Corporation, inquired in waiting
of Secretary Cornelio Balmaceda of the Department of Commerce and
Industry, as Chairman of the Import Control Board, whether shipment
of^leaf tobacco into the Philippines could be made without such
license. Stone hill also requested information as to whether American
investors might ship leaf tobacco to the Philippines as an investment
as long as no remittances of foreign exchange to the investors were
made.
Secretary Balmaceda, on March 7, 1950, answered Stone hill’s queries in a letter of the following tenor:
“In reply to your inquiry as to whether your company
may be allowed to ship Virginia leaf tobacco into the Philippines, I
wish to inform you that Virginia leaf tobacco is not under import
control. You may, therefore, bring in the quantity that your cigarette
factory needs as raw materials for its operation if, as you say, the
shipment may be made without the need for any outflow of dollars from
this side. This Office would strongly recommend to new and prospective
investors in the Philippines desiring to establish factories in this
country to have part of the initial capital brought into this country
in the form of machinery and materials. I understand from the
information you furnished.us that this is precisely the procedure you
are following in bringing in Virginia leaf tobacco as part of the
initial capital in your new cigarette factory.“Hoping that this information will be of assistance to you in launching your new factory, I remain”
Relying upon the above letter, leaf tobacco was shipped to the
Philippines by various American investors, of three of which shipments
the United States Tobacco Corporation was the consignee. These
shipments left the United States in April and arrived at the port of
Manila on different dates during the month of June.
In the meanwhile, on May 19, 1950, Republic Act No. 426 was
approved, entitled “An Act to regulate imports and for other purposes.”
The new act placed leaf tobacco under control and required an import
license for all imports of this commodity; and under resolution No. 1,
promulgated on June 3, 1950, the new Import Control Board stipulated
that “Import licenses shall be issued by the Import Control
Administration” “for all imports not covered by Executive Order No. 295
as amended, in excess of P6 per cent per month of the total value of
such imports for each applicant during 1949.”
By reason of these rules and regulations and in obedience to the
Import Control Board’s directive, release of the various shipments of
petitioner’s tobacco that were being held up at the customs house was
refused by the Commissioner of Customs, On behalf of the Commissioner
of Customs, it is further alleged that “under Section 1250 of the
Revised Penal (Administrative) Code, as amended, (he has) authority to
withhold the delivery to the petitioner of the said merchandise until
such legal requirements have been accomplished by the petitioner.”
It is to be noted in this connection that on June 12 and 13, 1950,
Modesto Formilleza, in his capacity as technical assistant of the
Import Control Commissioner, and in the name of the Import Control
Office, addressed four letters to the Commissioner of Customs
requesting him to release the leaf tobacco shipments in question, and
in accordance with that instruction, this respondent, on June 13, 1950
made delivery of one shipment—19 hog heads of leaf tobacco. The refusal
of the Commissioner of Customs to celease the remaining shipments
consigned to the petitioner was due to an instruction of the Import
Control Board, coursed through the Import Control Commissioner,
ordering these shipments freezed and repudiating the authority of the
technical assistant of the Import Commissioner.
The decisive question that emerges from this set of facts and
contentions is whether goods in transit on the date of the approval of
Republic Act No. 426, which was May 19, 1950, were covered by the new
enactment. Act No. 426 contains no provision on the subject, but the
following sections thereof supply, we think, necessary basis for a
decisions
“Sec. 6. No person, corporation or association shall
import any article, goods or commodity into the Philippines without a
proper Import license issued for said purpose in accordance with this
Act. Any importation or order to import any.. articles, goods or
commodities under control under the old Import Control Law between
April thirty, nineteen fifty and the date of the approval of this Act
shall be considered illegal unless such order or importation was duly
approved by the Import Control Board.“Sec. 23. The Import
Control Board shall, as soon as possible and in no case exceeding sixty
days, fix all the import quotas of all items of imports as provided for
in this Act; meantime, all the existing quotas and allocations as well
as rules and regulations on import control shall continue until revised
or repealed, and the Members of the Import Control Board and the Import
Control Commissioner shall remain in office until the President has
appointed their successors.”
It will be seen that Section 6 banned only articles, goods or
commodities theretofore under control. Leaf tobacco was uncontrolled by
the executive order or the rules and regulations issued in virtue of
Act No. 330. Petitioner’s importations were therefore not illegal. This
conclusion seems so obvious as to need no discussion.
By Section 6 of Act No. 426, all goods including leaf tobacco have
been placed under control. Petitioner’s merchandise left the port of
departure before the passage of that Act but arrived in Manila after
its approval. For the purpose of enforcing or applying said Section 6,
there can only be one date for importation, which was the date? The
date the goods were ordered, the date they were put on board vessels,
or the date they reached the port of destination? We are of the opinion
that the date of importation is the date of shipment and not the date
of arrival in Manila.
Granting.the opposite premise, for the sake of this decision, that
the petitioner’s importation comes under the provisions of the new
law, still, the respondents’ position has behind it no more than an
unbending adherence to a formalism utterly unreasonable as applied to
this case. The respondents would punish an importer solely for not
having a license which at the time of the importation was unnecessary
and unavailable. They would confiscate, for this reason, goods which
have been brought to the Philippines through the Secretary of Commerce
and Industry’s encouragement. In adopting such attitude, the Import
Control Board would not only commit grave injustice to petitioner but
would subvert the government’s policy of attracting foreign investors
and jeopardize one of the principal ends for which the Board was
created, namely: conservation of the dollar reserves.
As has been seen, the Secretary of Commerce and Industry, who at
the time was the official handling or having direct supervision over
import control, not only told the petitioner’s president to go ahead
with his proposed importations but commended and applauded his
company’s projected venture as in furtherance of the government’s
policy of industrialization. There is no valid justification for
repudiating this assurance after the petitioner has acted on the faith
of it. Trivial and questionable legalism which affects no fundamental
principle, no injury to public interest, no outflow of dollars, can
afford to yield if for no other reason than to honor and instill
confidence in government commitments made through responsible
officials. The Secretary of Commerce and Industry’s commitment does not
have the legal and formal characteristics of a treaty, and it is far
from our thought to insinuate that said commitment should be so
considered, but the underlying principle is the same and may be
summoned to the petitioner’s aid.
It is therefore our decision that the writ of mandamus issue,
commanding the Import Control Commissioner, the Import Control Board,
and the Commissioner of Customs forthwith to release the leaf tobacco
described in the petition and its annexes.
Ozaeta, Paras, Pablo, Bengzon, Montemayor, and Reyes, JJ., concur.