ILOILO DOCK & ENGINEERING CO., PETITIONER, VS. THE WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION COMMISSION, ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

This is a review of the decision of the above mentioned Commission
awarding death compensation to respondent Florentino Visitacion, as
heir of the deceased Salvador Visitacion.

The facts, as stipulated by the parties at the hearing before the
investigating officer of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission, and as
adopted by the Commission itself,

are these:

“that during his lifetime Salvador Visitacion was a
regular employee of the respondent earning one hundred and thirty pesos
a month. The nature of his work was a clerk in the office of the IDECO
(Iloilo Dock & Engineering Co.) situated at Lapuz, Lapaz, City of
Iloilo. The IDECO is a department of the respondent, Visayan Stevedore
Transportation Company; that Salvador Visitacion was the president of a
Labor union, the membership of which was also employed by the
respondent in its branch named IDECO with establishment and offices at
Lapuz, Lapaz, Iloilo City; that about 2:15 in the afternoon of June 23,
1953, Salvador Visitacion left his office where he was working, went
outside of the building afiad while he was in front of the office
building, he was shot by a person named Cerson Espinosa. Cerson
Espinosa is also one of the leaders of another labor union with
membership also in the IDECO who are employees of the respondent
company. Cerson Espinosa is not an employee of the company and he
entered the company compound without the knowledge and permission of
the company; that before this incident took place, there was pending
before the Court of Industrial Relations a petition for Certification
Election in the IDECO among its employees to determine what union
should represent the employees of the IDECO and among the labor unions
who were claiming majority representation of the employees of the IDECO
are the unions headed by Salvador Visitacion and Cerson Espinosa
respectively; that lately, certification election took place and the
union formerly headed by Salvador Visitacion, came out elected to
represent the employees of the respondent working in the IDECO.”

Upon consideration of these facts, the Commission approved “the
hearing officer’s finding that the fatal assault upon the person of
Salvador Visitacion, which occurred within the period of his hours of
duty and in a place within the premises of his employer where he had a
right to be, arose ‘in the course’ of his employment.” Consequently, it
awarded death benefits to said employees’ relatives. Wherefore, above
petitioner appealed to this Court imputing error to the respondent
Commission for” holding the death to be compensable under the
provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Law.

Petitioner maintains that, from the facts cited in the decision, it
is safe to assume that the cause of the death was the personal quarrel
and rivalry between the deceased and his assailant, both of them being
labor leaders; that given such cause of the shooting, the death is not
compensable because the law intents to grant compensation only for
injury or death suffered in connection with the employee’s duties—not
necessarily for all injuries or death suffered during the hours of work
and neither for injuries or death suffered as a result of an act or
incident entirely disconnected with or alien to the duties or work
performed by him.

Petitioner’s assumption that Visitacion’s death resulted from the
personal quarrel and rivalry between him and his assailant, is
groundless. As respondent points out, no evidence was ever presented to
show such motive, and neither has it been shown that personal enmity
existed between them. Even the findings of the hearing officer did not
touch on such assertion of assumed fact. In the said findings, the
proximate cause of the accident was attributed to the security guard’s
failure to “frisk” private individuals, and take their firearms for
deposit; indeed “all insinuations of prior antecedents and/or motives”
were found of no importance warranting further discussion.

We think the respondent Commission committed no error in its
interpretation of said Sec. 2 of Act No. 3428 as amended. We sustain
its ruling that “the absence of specific evidence of a work-connection
cause of the assault is not necessarily fatal to a claim for
compensation under the Act, if, as in the case at bar death occurred in
the course of the employment,” because it merely applied our ratio decidendi in the case of Batangas Transportation Co. vs. Josefina M. Vda. de Rivera, et al. (99 Phil. 1025) wherein we held:

“Many decisions in the United States awarded
compensation to the employee’s family where he was found dead under
circumstances indicating that death took place within the time and
space limits of the employment. In the absence of any evidence of what
caused the death most court will indulge in a presumption or inference
that the death arose out of the employment’ (p. 10, Larsons’) Mark
well, compensation is granted ever in the absence of any evidence of
the cause of death provided there is proof that the death probably
occurred in the course of employment.”

Here the deceased died in the course of his employment; so there is a presumption that his death arose out of it.^[1]

Wherefore, the appealed decision is affirmed, with costs against petitioner.

Padilla, Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Concepcion, Barrera, Paredes, Dizon, Regala, and Makalintal, JJ., concur.

---

^[1] See Santiago vs. Reyes L-13115, Feb. 29, 1960. See also Bureau of Public Works vs. Worksmen’s Compensation, 104 Phil., 1002.