CITY OF LEGAZPI, PETITIONER, VS. THE HONORABLE ROBERTO ZURBANO, JUDGE OF THE CFI OF ALBAY; ORESTES MAGDARAOG, SOCORRO AMADOS, LOURDES ANTIVOLA, RAFAELA YAN, CARLOS ARJONA, DOLOR…

Appeal from an order of the Court of First Instance of Albay, in its Civil Case No. 3032, overruling herein
petitioner’s motion to dismiss and holding that said court has jurisdiction to take cognizance of the case.

Several persons had joined as plaintiffs in filing an action in
the Court of First Instance for damages against the City of Legazpi, and other defendants
(Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co., Prudencio Barbudo, Antonio Arevalo and
Mauro Nebreja). 
The complaint charged that on 4 December 1964, a fire truck, type 0-10,
owned by the City of Legazpi, and driven by Prudencio Barbudo, due to the
imprudence and recklessness of said driver and of his co-defendants, collided
successively with a delivery truck
of the Pepsi Cola Bottling Co., then passenger bus No. 4516 which was in the
act of overtaking a parked sedan,
and finally hit passenger bus No. PUB-4628.  As a result, the latter vehicle (PUB-4628)
was practically demolished, and several of its passengers were physically
injured.  Hence the suit, filed to
recover alleged damages due to the following:

In due time, the City of Iegazpi
interposed a motion praying that, with the exception of the claim of Juan Marbella, the complaint be dismissed for lack of
jurisdiction, because the amount demanded by each of the passenger plaintiffs,
including the ratable share in the attorney’s fees, did not exceed P10,000.00, hence their claims were within the exclusive civil
jurisdiction of the Municipal Court.  In
support of its move, the City of Legazpi
invoked section 88 of the Judiciary Act (R.A. 296, as amended by R.A. 2613 and
3828):

“Sec. 88. Original
jurisdiction in civil cases. – In all civil actions, including those mentioned in Rules fifty-nine and
sixty-two (now Rules 57 and 58) of the Rules of Court, arising in his
municipality or city, and not exclusively cognizable by the Court of First
Instance, the municipal judge and the judge of a city court shall have
exclusive original jurisdiction where the value of the subject matter or amount
of the demand does not exceed ten thousand pesos, exclusive of interests and
costs.  Where there are several claims or
causes of action between the same parties embodied in the same complaint, the
amount of the demand shall be the totality of the demand in all the causes of
action, irrespective of whether the causes of action arose out of the same or
different transactions; but where the claims or causes of action joined in a
single complaint are separately owned by or due to different parties each
separate claim shall furnish the jurisdictional test.’ (
Underscoring ours )”

The counsel for the plaintiffs objected.  The Court of First Instance sustained the
objection, and overruled the motion to dismiss, holding that the case was
within its jurisdiction, in view of section 3 of Rule of Court 3, now Revised
Rule 2, section 5, that provides:

“SEC. 5. Joinder of causes of
action. -Subject to rules regarding jurisdiction, venue and joinder of parties, a party may in one pleading state, in
the alternative or otherwise, as many causes of action as he may have against
an opposing party (a) if the said causes of action arise out of the same
contract, transaction or relation between the parties, or (b) if the causes of
action are for demands for money, or are of the same nature and character.

“In the cases falling under clause (a) of the preceding
paragraph, the action shall be filed in the inferior court unless any of the
causes joined falls within the jurisdiction of the Court of first Instance, in
which case it shall be filed in the latter court.

“In the cases falling under clause (b) the jurisdiction shall
be determined by the aggregate amount of the demands, if for money, or by their
nature and character, if otherwise.” applied in International Colleges vs.
Argonza, 90 Phil. 470, and Soriano
y Cia vs. Jose, 86 Phil. 523.

Unable to secure
reconsideration of the denial of its motion to dismiss, the City of Legazpi appealed directly to this Court, insisting
that the Court of First Instance had no jurisdiction over the claims of
plaintiffs, save that of Juan Marbella.

The issue, therefore, is
whether jurisdiction should be determined by aggregate claims of all the
injured passengers or by the amount of each individual claim.

We rule for the
appellant.  We have ruled in A. Soriano y Cia vs. Jose, 86 Phil.
523, that the provisions of the Rules of Court, concerning joinder
of causes of action and permissive joinder of parties
“in whom or against whom any right to relief in respect to or arising out
of the same transaction or series of transactions is alleged to exist”,
are designed to save the parties “unnecessary work, trouble and
expense, x x x and not to enlarge the court’s juris­diction as applied to the
amount in controversy” (cas. cit. page
526).  This design is apparent from the
limitations expressed both in section 5 of Revised Rule 2, “subject to the
rules regarding jurisdiction, venue and joinder
of parties”, as well as in section 6, Rule 3, on permissive joinder of parties,” except as otherwise provided in
these rules”. The latter proviso, in effect, reiterates the limitations
expressed in Rule 2, section 5.

And it could not be
otherwise.  The Constitution (section 2,
Article VIII) expressly vested in Congress,” the power to define,
prescribe and apportion the jurisdiction of the various courts”, so
that in determining whether or not a case lies within or without the
jurisdiction of a court, the statutory enactment is supreme.  The latter portion of section 88 of the
Judiciary Act (previously quoted) must be, therefore, the sole standard to be
reckoned with, and it plainly states that the test for joined causes of action
and parties shall be the individual claims, and not their aggregate.  No resort to the Rules of Court is
permissible to cir­cumvent the statutory prescription.

Manifestly, the court
below was misled by the fact that in International Colleges vs. Argonza (supra) the claims aggregated to an amount beyond
the juris­diction of the Municipal Court; but each individual claim lay within
its jurisdic­tion, and we held that the aggregation could not be used to make
up a jurisdictional amount that would vest power in the Court of First Instance
to take cognizance of the case.

WHEREFORE, the order of dismissal is annulled and set
aside, except as to plaintiff Juan Marbella.  The Court of First instance is hereby
directed to dismiss the claims of the other plaintiffs since they are within
the jurisdiction of the proper municipal court, though they may properly be
joined therein in one single complaint. 
Without costs.

Concepcion, C.J., Dizon,
Makalintal, Zaldivar,
Sanchez, Ruiz Castro, Fernando, and
Capistrano, JJ., concur.