LECAROZ TRANSIT, FRANCISCO LECAROZ AND ROSA E. LECAROZ, PETITIONERS, VS. SECRETARY OF LABOR AND CELSO PADERNAL (DECEASED), REPRESENTED BY HIS WIDOW, LOURDES PADERNAL, RESPONDENTS.

The issues upon which this dispute turns are neither novel nor of
any great complexity.  The case is
notable chiefly for the careless and slipshod manner in which it was dealt with
by officials of the defunct Workmen’s Compensation Commission.  Flawed with error from the outset, it had
initially been filed with the Workmen’s Compensation Unit at San
Pablo City as a
claim for disability benefits for Celso Padernal, a driver
of Lecaroz Transit, who had allegedly become incapacitated from a brain tumor
contracted in the course of his employment. 
It was very shortly discovered, however, that Padernal
was already dead and hence, the claim should not have been filed in his
name.  So it was replaced with one for
death benefits, this time in the name of
Padernal’s widow, Lourdes Dice Ouinto
Vda. de Padernal, for
herself and in behalf of her minor children.^[1]

An award was rendered ex parte
about a year later, on July 22, 1974,
by the Acting Chief of the WCC Unit, in favor of Lourdes Padernal.  But the award was patently erroneous; for it
found that Lourdes Padernal (not her husband, Celso) had contracted a brain tumor while in the employ of Lecaroz Transit, which illness was either aggravated by or the result of the nature of
her employment, and on this ludicrously
erroneous foundation, ordered Lecaroz to pay
Lourdes herself P623.25 as reimbursement
for medical expenses and P6,000.00 as compensation for permanent total
disability.^[2]

Notice of the award was served on Lecaroz
Transit which immediately filed a motion praying for reinstatement of its right
to controvert the claim.  Alleging that
it had never received notice, either of the filing of the claim or of the
proceedings in the WCC, or even of the illness of the deceased Celso Padernal, Lecaroz asserted that it had thus been denied an
opportunity to controvert the claim and to show, not only that Lourdes Padernal had never been its employee, but also, and even if
the award be read to refer to Celso Padernal, that there was no causal connection between his illness and the nature of his work, not
to mention the fact that when Celso died, he had
already long ceased to be an employee of Lecaroz
Transit.

The motion to reinstate was denied.  But a subsequent motion for reconsideration
was pronounced well-taken,^[3]
although instead of giving Lecaroz a chance to offer proof against the claim, the same Acting Chief of the WCC
Unit forthwith issued an amended award, this time finding that Celso Padernal had developed a
brain tumor “which was either aggravated by or the result of the nature of
his employment while in the employ of respondent as driver (and) resulting to
(sic) his/her death on February 4, 1972,” and on that basis sentencing Lecaroz to pay his widow P5,383.36 as death compensation
and reimbursement for burial expenses,
P623.35 as reimbursement of medical expenses, and P250.20 as attorney’s fees.^[4]

Lecaroz appealed to the Commission, but
there it lost again.  To be sure, the
Commission did rule that the amended award of death benefits was
“erroneous,” “fatally defective” and “devoid of
merit,” since Padernal had died more than two
years after the date of disability. 
Nonetheless the Commission awarded disability benefits for Padernal’s “total” and “permanent”
incapacity predicated on what it declared to be the “indisputable
fact” that the latter had been
“employed as a driver by respondent and * * during the course of his
employment * * developed the ailment later on diagnosed as a brain tumor which
disabled him totally for labor on November 1, 1969 and caused his death on
February 4, 1972.”^[5]

The Commission brushed aside the issue of lack of notice raised by Lecaroz; it
adverted to the fact that a registry return card had been received by the WCC
Unit relative to the notice sent by the Hearing Officer to Lecaroz,
and to the decision in Vda. de Calado vs. WCC^[6]
awarding similar benefits despite the failure to give the notice or to file the
claim required by Section 24 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act.

Lecaroz filed a motion for reconsideration, which
the Commission denied.  Hence, the preset
appeal:  (a) pleading lack of notice of,
variously, the sickness or death of Celso Padernal, the filing of the claim for benefits, and the
proceedings conducted in the WCC Unit at San Pablo City up to the time of the
original award; and (b) asserting an ability, given the opportunity, to show
that (1) Celso Padernal had
ceased to be employed by Lecaroz as early as in 1957,
(2) at the time he left such employ, he was completely free from any ailment
that might have been caused or aggravated by the nature of work and (3) his
alleged brain tumor had been contracted many years after his separation from Lecaroz’s service.

Present   respondents were
directed by the Court to comment on the petition for review.  Lourdes Padernal
never complied, despite notice which was effected only with no little difficulty, and a subsequent
show-cause resolution.  The comment filed
by the Secretary of Labor stressed, mainly, Lecaroz’s
forfeiture of its right to controvert the claim, resulting in its being barred
from setting up the so-called non-jurisdictional defenses, such as that the
illness did not arise out and in the course of employment.

Due process requires, of course, that before any person is made
liable to perform any prestation or satisfy any
liability, there be prior notice and opportunity to be heard.  In workmen’s compensation cases under the old
law, Act No. 3428, it was necessary, in
addition, that notice of the illness of injury be given the employer
and the claim based thereon filed within specific periods.  That notice was a condition precedent to the
prosecution of any claim for compensation; a failure to give
it barred recovery.^[7] Section 24 of the Act provided:

“SEC. 24.  No
compensation proceeding under this Act shall prosper unless the employer has
been given notice of the injury
or sickness as soon as possible after the same was received or contracted and
unless a claim for compensation was made not later than two months after the
date of the injury or sickness, or in case of death, not later than three
months after death, regardless of whether or not compensation was claimed by
the employee himself. * * *.

The notice requirement has been liberally interpreted, both in
the United States
upon whose statutes our compensation law had been modelled,
and in this jurisdiction.  It may be
given in any form, even orally.  Indeed,
the Act provided that “failure or delay in giving notice * * (was not) a
bar to the proceeding if it is shown that
the employer, his agent or representative had knowledge of the accident or that
the employer did not suffer by such delay or failure.”^[8]

 Even so, notice in some
form or other was generally deemed imperative, the need for it being founded on
the employer’s correlative duty himself to notify the Workmen’s Compensation
Commission of the employee’s
sickness or injury and to manifest whether he (the employer) was admitting or denying liability for compensation, such
notification being, in turn,
requisite to the preservation of his right to controvert the claim.^[9]

As already observed, Lecaroz flatly
denies receiving any notice, and on that account having any knowledge, of the
alleged illness of Padernal or of the compensation
claim filed on behalf of the latter or of
the proceedings conducted thereon prior to being served copy of original award
of July 22, 1974 erroneously rendered in favor of Lourdes Padernal.  The record shows that the only evidence
contradicting this disclaimer consists of: 
(1) the testimony of the same Feliciano Reyes who had originally filed the
claim on behalf of Celso Padernal
that such notice had orally been given,^[10]
and (2) a registry return receipt purporting to show that notice of the claim
had also been dispatched to Lecaroz by the San Pablo WCC Unit on March 7,
1974^[11] which,
however, carries an illegible and never-identified signature where that of the
addressee or his agent should appear in acknowledgment
of its receipt.  These “proofs” are quite clearly
too weak and ambiguous in character to survive the direct challenge offered by Lecaroz, given the fact that notice, as already pointed
out, is as crucial to the claimant’s cause as it is to the respondent’s in a
compensation case.

Indeed, given the prima facie serious and substantial
objections it has raised against the compensation claim, the Court cannot bring
itself to believe that Lecaroz, if it had had notice
thereof, would have passively allowed the proceedings before the San Pablo WCC Unit to progress, as they did, to an award
without even making an appearance therein; this, as much as any other
consideration, inclines to the belief that no such notice was in fact
effectively given and received.

Calado vs. WCC, supra,
cannot appropriately be cited to support the respondents here because it does
not dispense with the requirement of notice or the filing of a formal claim
unqualifiedly and under all circumstances, but simply applies and gives effect
to the earlier-quoted Section 27 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act that failure
or delay in giving notice does not bar a claim if it is
shown that the employer, his agent
or representative had knowledge of the accident or that the employer did not
suffer by such delay or failure. 
There the Court found that:

“* * (t)here is no
controversy that Tomas Calado was employed with Acoje, that he contracted tuberculosis that arose out of
and in the course of such
employment and that he eventually
died of said illness.  Neither is there
any question that petitioners were his dependents.  That tuberculosis is a compensable sickness
is expressly recognized in Section 2 of the law.  Acoje does not and
cannot dispute the fact that from the first time Calado
vomitted blood and exhibited other symptoms of the
disease, he repaired to the Company hospital and was treated thereat; that he
was not cured; when he left the hospital, the company physician refused to
issue to him any release paper allowing him to work; he asked for a sick leave, Acoje denied;
instead, he was made to sign resignation papers; scarcely over two years
thereafter, he died of the same malady.**.”

As may be seen, the factual situation here is entirely different,
it never having been pretended that apart from the alleged notices that Lecaroz firmly denies receiving, said employer or its
agents or representatives had any actual knowledge of Celso
Padernal’s ailment.

The appealed decision, while appearing to uphold Lecaroz’s claim of an unimpaired right to controvert,
nonetheless denies said employer the appropriate relief, which should have been
the reception of such evidence that the latter had to offer to defeat the
claim.  Instead, it also summarily makes another award of disability benefit based on the
allegedly indisputable facts of Celso Padernal’s employment as a driver by Lecaroz
and of his having, in the course of such employment,
developed the illness which disabled him totally and later caused his death,
and holding, on the basis of Calado, that Lecaroz was not exempted from liability even if Padernal had not been able to file claim while he was still
alive.

The record does not support those factual findings.  On the contrary, it is conspicuous for the
absence of any competent, credible evidence that Celso
Padernal was in the employ of Lecaroz
at a time reasonably proximate to the onset
of the former’s illness.  Given Lecaroz’s
vigorous assertions that Padernal had left its
service in the best of health as early as in 1957, or twelve (12) years before
he fell ill in 1969, some substantial proof that he remained so employed
during that intervening period should have been offered.  The presumption of compensability created by
law and jurisprudence does not arise from the failure alone of the alleged
employer to controvert a claim for compensation benefits; another essential, if
implicit, prerequisite is that the fact of employer-employee relationship and supervention of the illness during the existence of that
relation are established, the burden of doing so being upon the claimant.

WHEREFORE, being in error for awarding disability benefit
without clear evidentiary basis, as well for denying petitioner Lecaroz the opportunity to controvert the private
respondent’s claim, the questioned decision of the Workmen’s Compensation
Commission and the order of the respondent Secretary of Labor affirming said
decision are REVERSED and SET ASIDE and the proceedings wherein the same were
entered are DISMISSED, without pronouncement as to costs.

SO ORDERED.

Cruz, Gancayco, Griño-Aquino, and Medialdea, JJ., concur.

^[1] WCC Record, pp. 5, 18

^[2] Rollo, pp. 37-38. 
The award was made by the Acting Chief of the Workmen’s
Compensation Unit at San Pablo City.

^[3] Rollo, p. 46

^[4] Rollo, p.
47

^[5] Rollo, pp. 54-55. 
The Commission’s Decision was written by Chairman Severo M. Pucan
and concurred in by Associate Commissioner Eugenio I.
Sagmit, Jr.

^[6]
38 SCRA 567 (1971)

^[7] Luzon Stevedoring Co. vs. Hon. C. de
Leon, 106 Phil. 562 (1959)

^[8]
Sec. 27, Workmen’s Compensation Act

^[9] Secs. 37 and 45, id.

^[10] WCC Record, p. 18

^[11] WCC Record, p. 23