LEONCIA CABRERA DE CHUATOCO, PETITIONER, VS. GREGORIO ARAGON AND JUDGE ESTEBAN GARCIA, RESPONDENTS.

This case was certified to this Court by the Court of Appeals, the
issues raised by the petitioner-appellant being purely questions of law.

The record shows that on November
6, 1958 the respondent-appellee Gregorio
Aragon, who was then a municipal policeman of Antipolo,
Rizal, filed a criminal complaint for simple slander
against the petitioner-appellant, Leoncia Cabrera de Chuatoco, before the Justice of the Peace Court of Antipolo presided
over by the respondent-appellee Esteban Garcia. 
The complaint, docketed as Criminal Case No. 415, alleged:

“That on or about November 6, 1958, at about 3:00 o’clock in
the afternoon in the municipality of Antipolo, province
of Rizal, Philippines and within the jurisdiction of
this Honorable Court, the said accused with intent to discredit, disrepute and
dishonor the good name and reputation of the herein complainant, did then and
there wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously declared
in public and within the hearing distance of third persons, the following
malicious and defamatory remarks:  ‘IKAW AY WALANG PINAGARALAN, LECHE KA’, for which false malicious and defamatory
remarks, the herein complainant suffered moral damages which may be fixed at
the discretion of the Honorable Court.

“For the aggravating circumstances, the undersigned
complainant is a Policeman, engaged in the performance of his official duties
and it took place in the office of the Chief of Police.”

The appellant was arrested on August 12, 1960, and on August 16, 1960 she filed with the Justice of the Peace
Court a motion to quash the criminal complaint upon the ground that the facts
charged there­in did not constitute an offense. 
On September 20, 1960
the motion to quash was denied by the appellee
Justice of the Peace Esteban Garcia, for lack of merit.  Instead of entering a plea after the denial
of her motion to quash, the appellant filed a petition for certiorari with preliminary injunction before the Supreme Court
against the herein appellees, alleging that appellee Justice of the Peace Esteban Garcia acted with
grave abuse of discretion in denying her motion to quash the criminal complaint
for slight slander which was filed in his court.  That petition was docketed in this Court as
G. R. No. L-17536.  This Court dismissed
the petition “without prejudice to action, if any, in the Court of First
Instance; and appeal at the proper time is the remedy.”

Taking a hint from the resolution of this Court dismissing her
petition for certiorari, the
appellant filed in the Court of First Instance of Rizal
a petition for certiorari with
preliminary injunction containing practically the same allegations as those contained in the petition which she
had previously filed before this Court. 
The Court of First Instance of Rizal gave due
course to the petition and issued a writ
of preliminary injunction directed against appellee
Justice of the Peace enjoining him from proceeding with Criminal Case No. 415
before his court until further orders. 
The appellees in the present case, who were
respondents before the Court of First Instance of Rizal,
filed a motion to dismiss the petition for certiorari
upon the ground that said petition did not state a cause of action. After due
hearing; the Court of First Instance of Rizal, on March
3, 1961, dismissed the petition for certiorari
and dissolved the writ of preliminary
injunction that it had previously issued. 
In its order dismissing the petition the lower court declared, among others, as follows:

“A petition for certiorari
may be availed of only to correct an abuse of discretion on the part of a tribunal,
board or officer exercising judicial functions or for the purpose of annuling the proceeding of such tribunal, board or officer
when the proceeding has been taken without or in excess of its jurisdiction or
has acted with rave abuse of discretion and there is no appeal nor any fair,
speedy and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law.  (Sec. 1, Rule 67 of the Rules of Court). In other words, it is an action to prevent
acts in excess of authority or jurisdiction as well as to correct manifest
abuse of discretion committed by an inferior tribunal when an appeal does not
prove to be more speedy and adequate remedy. 
(Claudio, et al. v. Zandueta, 64 Phil. 812,
817).

“In the instant case, there has been no showing that
respondent court has acted without or in excess of its jurisdiction or with
grave abuse of discretion.  On the other
hand, the denial of a motion to quash assuming it was erroneous can be the
object of an appeal once the case has been tried on the merits.

“In view of the foregoing the Court is of the opinion that the
petition really states no cause of action.”

From the foregoing order
of the Court of First Instance of Rizal, the
appellant appealed to the Court of Appeals. 
The appellant filed her brief in due time, but the apellees
did not file any brief.  On August
30, 1962 the Court
of Appeals certified this case to this Court, as le have
stated at the beginning of this opinion.

In her brief the
appellant makes the following assignments of error:

1.  That the lower court erred in not holding that
the phrase in quest­ion “Ikaw ay walang pinagaralan, leche ka” is not slanderous.

2.  That the lower court erred in not issuing the
writ of certiorari, as prayed for under the circumstances.

3.  That the lower court erred and gravely abused
its discretion in barring petitioner-appellant from presenting her evidence.

4.  The lower court erred in denying
petitioner-appellant due process.

This appeal has no merit.

It is the rule that a
writ of certiorari would lie against
any tribunal, board or officer exercising judicial function only when it is
shown that, said tribunal, board or officer had acted without or in excess of
jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discre­tion.  We agree with the statement of the lower
court, in its order appealed from, that there has been no showing that appellee Justice of the Peace had acted without or in
excess of his jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion when he denied
appellant’s motion to dismiss the criminal complaint for slight slander filed
before his court upon the round that the facts charged in the complaint did not
constitute an offense.  The appellee Justice of the Peace had jurisdiction over the
subject matter and the person of the accused in Criminal Case No. 415.  When said
Justice of the Peace denied the motion to quash the criminal complaint upon the
ground that the facts charged did not constitute an offense he had
thereby ruled that in his opinion the complaint contained allegations of facts
constituting an offense.  Certainly the
Justice of the Peace did not abuse his discretion when he made that
ruling.  His ruling might be erroneous,
but it cannot be said that he
abused his discretion or that be acted without jurisdiction when he made that
ruling.  The appellant herein contends
that the statement “Ikaw ay walang pinagaralan,
leche ka” are
not slanderous per se. 
On the other hand, the appellee Justice of the
Peace, in his order denying the motion to quash, stated that “malice may
be presumed and need not be proved when the defendant fails to prove some
justifiable motives” and that “the burden of proof is upon the defendant to show
that such publica­tion was made with justifiable motives.”

In his first assignment of error the appellant claims that the
court a quo committed error in not holding that the statement
“Ikaw ay walang pinagaralan, leche ka” is
not slanderous.  In dismissing the
petition for certiorari it was not
necessary for the court a quo to rule whether that statement is
slanderous or not.  All that the lower
court had to do was to make a finding as to whether the Justice of the Peace of
Antipolo had acted with jurisdiction and without
abuse of discretion when he ruled that the criminal complaint before him ad
alleged facts constituting an offense. 
For the lower court to make a ruling whether those words allegedly
uttered by the appellant are slanderous or not would he to decide the criminal complaint pending before the Justice
of the Peace of Antipolo on its merits.  It was not incumbent on the lower court to
make such a ruling in deciding whether or not the Justice of the Peace of Antipolo had jurisdiction or had acted with abuse of
discretion when he denied the motion to quash the complaint in Criminal Case
No. 415. Neither is it proper for this Court now to make a ruling on whether
those words are slanderous or not, because for this Court to do so would also
be to decide on its merits the criminal case pending before the Justice of the
Peace Court of Antipolo.

In her second assignment of error appellant contends that the
lower court erred in not issuing the writ of certiorari prayed for, stressing the fact that:  there was no appeal from the interlocutory
order of the appellee
Justice of the Peace denying the motion to
quash the complaint.  This contention is
indeed flimsy. The record shows that the lower court dismissed the petition for
certiorari because it sustained the
averment of the appellees – respondents below – that
the facts charged in the complaint in Criminal Case No. 415 of the Justice of
the Peace Court of Antipolo did constitute an
offense; that certiorari was not the
proper remedy against an order denying the motion to quash, and that there was
no showing that the respondent Justice of the Peace acted with grave abuse of
discretion.  The action taken by the
lower court was in accordance with the rules on criminal procedure and the
rulings of this Court.  An order denying
a motion to quash an information or a complaint in a criminal case does not dispose of the case on its
merits, and the order is merely interlocutory. 
Pursuant to section 1 of Rule 113 of the old Rules of Court (now Section
1 of Rule 117 of the new Rules of Court) if the defendant in a criminal case moves to quash, and the motion
is denied “he shall immediately plead” – and this can have no other
meaning than that the trial must go on. 
If judgment is rendered against the defendant after due trial, the
defendant can appeal, and in the appeal he may raise the question which he
sought to be decided in the motion to quash.^[1]

The rulings of this Court
on this matter have been consistent that neither certiorari nor prohibition lies against an order of the court
granting or denying a motion to quash the complaint or information in a
criminal case.  If the court has
jurisdiction to take cognizance of the case and to decide the motion to quash,
appeal in due time is the obvious and only remedy for the public prosecutor or
the accused, as the case may be.^[2]

The appellant contends in
her third and fourth assignments of error that the lower court erred and gravely
abused its discretion in not allowing her to present evidence and that the
lower court had denied her due process. 
We also consider these assignments of error as flimsy.  The record shows that the lower court decided
the petition for certiorari on the
basis of the motion to dismiss filed by the appellee
in the court below.  The lower court
ruled on the motion to dismiss on the basis of the pleadings thus presented.  The matter of whether or not the appellee Justice of the Peace had abused his discretion
when he denied the motion to quash did not require the presentation of
evidence.

The appellant claims that
in her motion for reconsideration of the lower court’s order dismissing the
petition she offered to present evidence, to prove that appellee
Justice of the Peace had abused his discretion because he had arbitrarily
accepted the flimsy criminal complaint and issued the warrant of arrest almost
two years after the complaint had been filed, and also to prove that when the
words “Ikaw ay walang pinagaralan, leche ka” were
uttered by her she did not have malicious intent to place the appellee Gregorio Aragon in dishonor or disrepute.  The evidence that the appellant offered to
present was not relevant to the determination of whether the appellee Justice of the Peace had acted with abuse of discretion when he denied the motion
to dismiss.  We repeat that it was not
necessary for the lower court to hear evidence because it was satisfied from
the reading of the petition and the motion to dismiss, along with the annexes
thereto, that the petition did not allege a cause of action that would warrant
the issuance of a writ of certiorari.  The record shows that before the lower court issued the order dismissing the petition the parties
were heard in oral argument. Under the circumstances, the
appellant was not denied due process of law by the lower court.

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, the order appealed from should be, as it is hereby, affirmed, with costs against the petitioner-appellant.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Dizon, Makalintal, Bengzon, J.P., Sanchez, Castro, Angeles, and Fernando, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Mill vs. Yatco, 101 Phil. 599, 602.

^[2]
Arches vs. Beldia, et al., G.R. No. L-2414, May 27, 1949; Ricafort
vs. Fernan, et al., G. R. No. L-9789, May 25, 1957; Mill vs. Yatco, supra.