ADRIAN FONG, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. EMILIO M. JAVIER, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

Review of the Court of Appeals’ decision requiring
defendant-appellant Emilio M. Javier to pay Adrian Fong the sum of
P6,150.00 as unpaid portion of a loan, with 6% interest from December
16, 1953.

There is no question that, during the Japanese occupation, Javier
received from Fong the sum of P12,000,00 (according to plaintiff it was
P13,200.00) and that he signed a note promising to pay Fong P12,000.00
in legal currency within six months from and after the formal
declaration of peace between Japan and the United States” There is also
no question that in December 1953 when plaintiff’s complaint was filed,
the note had become due and that Javier had paid on account of it the
total amount of P5,850.00 only.

Nevertheless, Javier objects to the appellate court’s adjudication,
contending that as the loan was given in Japanese notes, he should now
be required to pay only the equivalent thereof according to
the so-called Ballantyne schedule of values of Japanese money, under
which, according to him, the loan represented merely “P600.00 in
genuine Philippine currency”.

The appellate court refused to apply this schedule, in view of the tenor of the promissory note and of our ruling in Roño vs. Gomez, 83 Phil., 890.

We find such refusal to be fully justified. Other subsequent
decisions of this Court along the lines of the Roño case have required
debts contracted during the Japanese occupation to be paid in
Philippine currency peso for peso^[1]
because the debtors had so promised expressly or impliedly. At this
time, given such repeated judgment, there is no need to reiterate the
explanation that the parties to a contract of loan could properly make
such stipulation and are bound by it.

The other point urged for revision concerns the matter of damages.
Defendant-appellant claimed in the lower courts moral damages, alleging
plaintiff had sued with the evil purpose of subjecting him to
harassment and humiliation. The Court of Appeals, however, declined to
award any such damages considering that plaintiff’s demand for payment
turned out to be well-founded. Indeed, the promissory note being due
and unpaid, the creditor may not be blamed for any embarassment the
other party may suffer by reason of this suit for collection. In the
absence, of course, of unnecessarily aggravating conduct for as
appellant puts it, just because a person happens to be creditor is no
license to abuse his debtor. However, in declining to assess damages,
the court a quo obviously thought the plaintiff had committed
no acts legally reprehensible—a factual issue on which we are not in a
position to express disagreement.

Judgment affirmed. No costs.

Montemayor, Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Concepcion, Reyes, J, B. L., Barrera, and Gutierrez David, JJ., concur.
Paras, C. J., reserves his vote.
Padilla and Endencia, JJ., took no part.

---

^[1] De la Cruz vs. Del Rosario, L-4859, July 1951; Berg vs. Teus, 96 Phil., 102; Jimenez vs. Bucoy, 54 Off. Gaz., 7560; Arellano vs. De Domingo, 101 Phil., 902.