G.R. No.

96301             May 28, 1991

COLEGIO DEL STO. NIÑO and/or Fr. AMBROCIO GALINDEZ, OSA RECTOR, Fr. NICOLAS
ECHEVARIA, OSA DIRECTOR, Fr. ROGELIO POSITAR, OSA, Mrs. JOSEFINA BACALSO,
petitioners,
vs.
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS COMMISSION and ANDREA OSORIO and PAZ
JARANILLA, respondents.

Fernan, Mercado & Tan for petitioners.

CRUZ, J.:

The petitioner challenges the decision of the public respondent finding that the private respondents
have been illegally dismissed and requiring their reinstatement, with damages. It prays that the said
decision be reversed for being tainted with grave abuse of discretion and asks that the questioned
dismissal be sustained instead.

The private respondents were employed by petitioner Colegio del Sto. Niño de Cebu, Andrea B.
Osorio in 1978 as a kindergarten teacher and Paz L. Jaranilla in 1981 as Grade I class teacher. In a
letter dated May 6, 1988, they were advised by the School Rector of the termination of their services
on account of incompetence, misconduct and insubordination. The teachers did not accept their
dismissal. On June 2, 1988, they filed with the Regional Arbitration Branch of the NLRC in Cebu City
a joint complaint against the petitioner and its officials and demanded reinstatement plus refund of
illegal deductions and payment of moral and exemplary damages as well as attorney's fees. 1

After hearing, Labor Arbiter Reynoso A. Belarmino found in favor of the complainants and ordered
their reinstatement without loss of seniority rights and payment to them of 5 months back salaries
and 10% attorney's fees.  Both parties appealed to the NLRC. The petitioner insisted that the
2

dismissals were justified. The private respondents questioned the computation of their back salaries,
besides reiterating their claim for moral and exemplary damages. On June 14, 1990, the NLRC
rendered its own decision dismissing the petitioner's appeal for tardiness and sustaining the private
respondent.  The dispositive portion read as follows:
3

WHEREFORE, in view of all the foregoing, the appeal of respondents is hereby DISMISSED.

The appeal of complainants is given due course and the decision appealed from is hereby
MODIFIED to read as follows:

1. Judgment is hereby rendered finding respondents guilty of illegal dismissal.

3. Respondents are also ordered to pay, jointly and severally, exemplary damages in
the total sum of Thirty Thousand (P30,000.00) Pesos, or Fifteen Thousand
(P15,000.00) Pesos for each complainant;

4. Respondents are further ordered to refund the amounts illegally deducted from the
salaries of the complainants;

5. Respondents are also ordered to pay the salary adjustment due to the
complainants as mandated by RA 6640; and

6. Respondents are finally ordered to pay jointly and severally, attorney's fees in the
amount equivalent to ten (10%) percent of the monetary awards herein.

In the execution of this judgment, the Labor Arbiter is directed to proceed in accordance with
the provisions of Section 3, Rule XI of the NLRC Rules.

SO ORDERED.

The petitioner then came to this Court on certiorari under Rule 65 of the Rules of Court. Upon its
motion and posting of the required bond, we issued a temporary restraining order on December 20,
1990, against the execution of the questioned in decision.

The petitioner contends that its appeal should not have been dismissed although concededly filed
beyond the 10-day reglementary period. Its excuse is that it had changed counsel and its new
lawyers had not yet received the records of the case. That is a shallow excuse. The decision of the
Labor Arbiter was rendered on January 19, 1989.  It was received on February 3, 1989, by Atty.
4

Emigdio B. Tancinco, the petitioner's counsel of record as of that date.  The petitioner claims it had
5

dismissed him as early as December 1988. However, there is no evidence of his withdrawal from the
case as counsel for the petitioner. Notice to him was notice to the petitioner. The circumstance that
the petitioner's new counsel received the records of the case only on February 6, 1989, did not have
the effect of extending the reglementary period for the filing of the appeal.

It is settled that perfection of an appeal in the manner and within the period prescribed by law is not
only mandatory but jurisdictional.  Failure to conform to the rules will render the judgment sought to
6

be reviewed final and unappealable. Thus, in Narag vs. NLRC,  the Court, disposing of a situation
7

similar to the case at bar, dismissed the appeal for having been filed on the eleventh day after
receipt of the challenged decision. There is no reason why the appeal in this case should not be
similarly treated.

The petitioner submits that technicalities should be waived in the interest of substantial justice and
invokes Insular Life Assurance Co. v. NLRC,  where the Court considered the merits of the case
8

even if the motion for reconsideration had admittedly been filed late. We find, however, that even on
the merits, the petition before us must also fall.

The basic issue is the legality of the private respondents' dismissal. On this matter, the findings of
the Labor Arbiter and the NLRC are binding on this Court in the absence of those exceptional
circumstances that will justify their review and reversal. There are no such exceptions in the case at
bar.

It is clear that the private respondents were not accorded proper notice and hearing before they
were notified of the termination of their services. They were simply summarily dismissed, without
being previously informed of the charges against them or being accorded an opportunity to refute
them. On this score alone, their dismissal must be struck down as an inexcusable and disdainful
rejection of due process.

The petitioner stresses the supposed report of an evaluation committee which found the private
respondents guilty of incompetence, misconduct and insubordination. This became the basis of their
notice of separation. The Court sees no evidence that the private respondents were called by the
committee to inform them of the charges against them and to hear their side. The proceedings of the
committee were presumably ex parte, if indeed there were any such proceedings at all.

The report of the evaluation committee took into account the petition supposedly filed by the parents
of some students against the two teachers but, as the complainants contended, none of such
parents was presented to affirm or verify the said petition. The petitioner says this argument is silly. It
is not silly. As it was the one that submitted the petition, it had the responsibility to authenticate the
document. He who alleges has the obligation to prove his allegations. In fact, even affidavits
presented in court are rejected as hearsay unless they are confirmed by the affiants at the trial. In
the case at bar, the petitioner made no effort at all to validate the unverified petition of the students'
parents. Instead, the petitioner suggests that it is the private respondents who should have
presented the signatories to disown their petition. Now, that is unacceptable.

Significantly, the evaluation committee surfaced only shortly before the dismissal of the private
respondents, as if it had been created for that purpose. There is no record of any such committee or
of any report it had previously rendered on any of the petitioner's employees for that year or any
other year before that. In fact, the only report apparently made by the committee was on the private
respondents, and this was shortly before they were dismissed.

Remarkably, it occurred to the petitioner to evaluate the private respondents only after they had
served for some time in its employ, evidently to its satisfaction. Osorio had been working for ten
years and Jaranilla for seven years before the petitioner decided that their services were, after all,
not satisfactory. Suddenly, they had become incompetent and insubordinate and guilty of improper
behavior.

One may suppose that the petitioner was merely remiss in the supervision of its employees, which is
itself not a minor shortcoming, considering the nature of its responsibilities as an educational
institution. But the more plausible explanation is that the private respondents were dismissed
because they had aroused the enmity of the acting principal by complaining about her to the
students' parents. It has been demonstrated that her derogatory report was readily accepted by the
evaluation committee and became the basis of the private respondents' dismissal.

Given the above circumstances, the Court believes that the award of moral and exemplary damages
to the private respondents is not unjustified. We agree with Labor Arbiter Belarmino that —

. . . By and large, respondents' action was a systematic and deliberate attempt to get rid of
complainants not because of inefficiency or insubordination but because of their militant
attitude on the wrongdoings of respondent Bacalso.
 We hold that the complainants' dismissal was carried out swiftly and surreptitiously to the
detriment and prejudice of complainants' tenurial rights. Such act smacks of high-
handedness and deserves no place in a school that teaches respect and instills moral values
and human rights to the future citizens of this country.

We also reject the petitioner's contention that the complainants had not asked for the refund of the
illegal deductions and the implementation of the wage adjustment under R.A. 6640, as the record
shows that they did complain about these matters. It is incredible that the petitioner could make such
a bare-faced submission when it is easily belied by the complainant itself. A copy of this complaint
was submitted by the private respondents as Annex "1" of their Comment. 9

The Court does not deny petitioner its academic freedom, which includes the power to choose its
own faculty and the education of its students according to its own standards and objectives and
pursuant to the purposes of the Constitution. But that freedom does not give it absolute authority
over its employees or exempt it from the requirements of due process in its dealing with them. The
institution of learning has a special duty to provide a fitting example to its pupils in the proper
observance of the law and the rudiments of fair play. There is no question it must refrain from any
conduct that will detract from the ideal and model of the enlightened student as a just and law-
abiding citizen.

WHEREFORE, the petition is DISMISSED, with costs against the petitioner.  The temporary
1âwphi1

restraining order dated December 20, 1990, is LIFTED. It is so ordered.

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

Footnotes

1
 Annex "1," Rollo, p. 104.

2
 Annex "D," Rollo, pp. 49-56.

3
 Annex "A," Rollo, pp. 30-45.

4
 Rollo, p. 56.

5
 Rollo, p. 39.

6
 Makabingkat v. People's Homesite & Housing Corp., 72 SCRA 326; FJR Garments
Industries v. CA, 130 SCRA 216.

7
 155 SCRA 199.

8
 156 SCRA 740.

9
 Rollo, p. 104.