MACONDRAY & COMPANY, INC., PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. DELGADO BROTHERS, INC., DEFENDANT AND APPELLEE.

This is an appeal from an order of the Court of First Instance of
Manila, issued, on motion of defendant Delgado Brothers, Inc.,
dismissing the complaint of plaintiff Macondray & Co., Inc., as
agent of the MS PLEASANTVILLE, upon the ground that said court has no
jurisdiction over the subject matter of the case.

It is alleged in the complaint that, as operator of the pier
services in the Port of Manila, said defendant received sixty-eight
(68) cartons of paint, among other cargoes unloaded in Manila, on April
17, 1955, from the aforementioned MS PLEASANTVILLE, of which plaintiff
Macondray & Co., Inc. is agent, for transshipment to Iloilo; that
when the cargo was, for this purpose, about to be loaded on board the
MV JOLO defendant delivered only fifty-nine (59) cartons and could not
deliver nine (9) cartons forming part of the same shipment; that,
shortly after the departure of the mv jolo for Iloilo, defendant
offered nine (9) cartons of paint to make up for the shortage, but
these nine (9) cartons were not accepted by the consignee and,
consequently, had to be sold at the best possible price obtainable,
thereby reducing the value of the loss of P209.98, which plaintiff, as
agent of the vessel, paid to the consignee; that defendant failed and
refused to pay said sum of P209.98, despite demands made by the
plaintiff; and that plaintiff was, accordingly, constrained to litigate
and incur an obligation to pay attorney’s fees and expenses of
litigation in the amount of not less than P300.00. Hence, it is prayed
in the complaint that defendant be sentenced to pay plaintiff said sum
of P209.98, with interest thereon, plus P300.00 as attorney’s fees and
expenses of litigation.

Defendant answered alleging that it had effected a complete delivery
of the above mentioned sixty-eight (68) cartons of paint to plaintiff’s
customs representative, who accepted said delivery without protest,
but, soon thereafter, it filed, with the permission of the court, a
motion to dismiss, upon the ground that it has no jurisdiction over the
subject matter of the complaint, the amount demanded therein being less
than P2,000. By ail order dated September 28, 1957, the lower court
granted this motion and, consequently, dismissed the complaint. Hence
this appeal by the plaintiff, upon the theory that the case at bar
calls for the exercise of admiralty jurisdiction, which is within the
original exclusive authority of courts of first instance.

It has been said that “the precise scope of admiralty jurisdiction
is not a matter of obvious principle or of very accurate history”; that
“this jurisdiction is to be interpreted by an enlarged, view of its
nature and objects”; that the “best guides as to its extent” are “the
Constitution, the laws of Congress, and the decisions of the Supreme
Court”; and that “as a result of the exclusive jurisdiction of all
admiralty and maritime cases, vested” in certain courts, “the court
themselves are * * * the sole judges of the scope of such jurisdiction,
subject of course to congressional legislation.” (1 Am. Jur., 550-
551.) Corpus Juris Secundum defines admiralty as “the branch of jurisprudence regulating maritime matters of a civil and criminal character, and in a more restricted sense is the tribunal administering maritime law
by a peculiar and distinct procedure” (2 C.J., p. 64; italics ours),
and states that admiralty jurisdiction covers “all maritime cases and only maritime cases and extends to both person and res.” (2 C.J.S., p. 65; italics ours.)

The case at bar does not deal with any maritime matter or with the
administration and application of any maritime law. As custodian of the
sixty-eight (68) cartons of paints it had received from the MS
Pleasantville, it was defendant’s duty, like that of any ordinary
depositary, to take good care of said goods and to turn the same over
to the party entitled to its possession, subject to such qualifications
as may have validly been imposed in the contract between the parties
concerned. Such duty on the part of the defendant would be the same if
the final destination of the goods were Manila, not Iloilo, and the
goods had not been imported from another state. The only issues raised
in the pleadings are (1) whether or not defendant had fully discharged
its obligation to deliver the aforementioned sixty-eight (68) cartons
of paint and (2), in the negative case, the amount of indemnity due the
plaintiff therefor. The determination of these questions does not
require the application of any maritime law and cannot affect either
navigation or maritime commerce. The foreign origin of the goods
is—under the attending circumstances—immaterial to the law applicable
to this case or the rights of the parties herein, or the procedure for
the settlement of their dispute. Indeed, it id well settled that:

”In case of controversy involving both maritime and non-maritime subject matter,
where the principal matter involved belongs to the jurisdiction of a
court of common law or of equity, admiralty will not take cognizance of
incidental maritime matters connected therewith but will relegate the
whole controversy to the appropriate tribunal.” (2 C.J.S., p. 66.)

Wherefore, the theory of plaintiff Macondray & Co., Inc., cannot
be sustained and the order appealed from is hereby affirmed, with costs
against said plaintiff. It is so ordered.

Paras, C.J., Bengzon, Padilla, Montemayor, Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Endencia, Barrera, and Gutierrez David, JJ., concur.