THE CITY OF MANILA, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. SATURNINA RIZAL, DEFENDANT AND APPELLEE.

The defendant in this case was convicted in the municipal court of the city
of Manila of a violation of a municipal ordinance against gambling, and appealed
to the Court of First Instance of Manila. In that court a demurrer to the
information was sustained on the ground that the action was brought in the name
of the city of Manila, and not in the name of the United States as required by
the provisions of section 2 of General Orders, No. 58. This is an appeal on
behalf of the Government from the order sustaining the demurrer.

The only question before us is whether prosecutions charging violations of
the municipal ordinances of the city of Manila, for which punishment by fine or
imprisonment is prescribed, may be brought in the name of the city of Manila.
This question must be answered in the negative. Section 2 of General Orders, No,
58, provides that in this jurisdiction “all Prosecutions for public offenses
shall be in the name of the United States against the persons charged with the
offenses.” Violations of municipal ordinances for which punishment by fine or
imprisonment is lawfully prescribed are, in our opinion, public offenses as that
term is used in the above-cited section of the order, and prosecutions for such
violations of municipal ordinances must therefore be instituted in the name of
the United States. (Santa Barbara vs. Sherman, 61 CaL, 57; City of
Brownville vs. Cook, 4 Neb., 101.)

The American cases on this point are digested in American Digest, volume 36,
Municipal Corporations, section 1401, and in American Digest, decennial edition,
volume 14, Municipal Corporations, section 636. A review of the cases there
cited discloses that the courts in a number of the States have held that
constitutional provisions requiring all prosecutions to be in the name of the
State do not preclude the legislature from authorizing a municipality to
maintain actions in its own name for violations of its ordinances. The reasoning
on which these decisions rest is indicated in the following extract from Dillon
on Municipal Corporations (5th ed., sec. 746):

“The distinction between statute law and municipal by-laws has been pointed
out, and the subject of concurrent prohibitions of the same act by the general
law and by the local ordinances of a municipality treated in the chapter on
Ordinances. The distinction is there drawn, and is to be observed, between acts
not essentially criminal, relating to municipal police and regulation, and those
intrinsically criminal, and which are made punishable as public offenses by the
general laws of the State. The pecuniary penalties which are annexed to
violations of the former class the legislature may, we think, authorize the
corporation to enforce in its own name, by civil action or by complaint, and
provision need not necessarily be made that they shall be prosecuted in the name
of the people or of the State.”

But without discussing whether in any event the distinction thus drawn could
properly be made in this jurisdiction, it is sufficient at this time to point
out that there is no express authority granted the city of Manila in its charter
to institute criminal actions in its own name, and that in this jurisdiction
actions instituted to enforce penalties of fine or imprisonment prescribed for
the violation of municipal ordinances are purely criminal actions and are in no
sense civil in their nature.

The order sustaining the demurrer in the court below should be and is hereby
affirmed, with the costs of this instance against the appellant.

Arellano, C. J., Moreland, Trent, and Araullo, JJ.,
concur.