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  • Salcedo-Ortanez VS Ca

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    Joannah Gamboa
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    The petitioner appealed the lower court's decision to admit cassette tapes of her telephone conversations as evidence in her annulment case. The tapes were recorded by the private respondent by allowing his friends in the military to wiretap his home telephone without the petitioner's consent. The Court of Appeals denied the petitioner's appeal. However, the Supreme Court ruled the tapes were inadmissible as evidence according to the Anti-Wiretapping Law, which expressly prohibits admitting recordings obtained without the consent of all parties. The trial court and Court of Appeals erred in failing to consider this law makes such recordings inadmissible.

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    2. SALCEDO-ORTANEZ VS CA

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    The petitioner appealed the lower court's decision to admit cassette tapes of her telephone conversations as evidence in her annulment case. The tapes were recorded by the private respondent by allowing his friends in the military to wiretap his home telephone without the petitioner's consent. The Court of Appeals denied the petitioner's appeal. However, the Supreme Court ruled the tapes were inadmissible as evidence according to the Anti-Wiretapping Law, which expressly prohibits admitting recordings obtained without the consent of all parties. The trial court and Court of Appeals erred in failing to consider this law makes such recordings inadmissible.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    74 views1 page

    Salcedo-Ortanez VS Ca

    Uploaded by

    Joannah Gamboa
    The petitioner appealed the lower court's decision to admit cassette tapes of her telephone conversations as evidence in her annulment case. The tapes were recorded by the private respondent by allowing his friends in the military to wiretap his home telephone without the petitioner's consent. The Court of Appeals denied the petitioner's appeal. However, the Supreme Court ruled the tapes were inadmissible as evidence according to the Anti-Wiretapping Law, which expressly prohibits admitting recordings obtained without the consent of all parties. The trial court and Court of Appeals erred in failing to consider this law makes such recordings inadmissible.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 1

    SALCEDO-ORTANEZ VS COURT OF APPEALS

    Facts:
    Private respondent Rafael Ortanez filed with the Quezon City RTC a complaint for annulment of marriage
    with damages against petitioner Teresita Salcedo-Ortanez, on grounds of lack of marriage license and/or
    psychological incapacity of the petitioner.
    Among the exhibits offered by private respondent were three (3) cassette tapes of alleged telephone
    conversations between petitioner and unidentified persons.
    Teresita submitted her Objection/Comment to Rafael’s oral offer of evidence. However, the trial court
    admitted all of private respondent’s offered evidence and later on denied her motion for reconsideration,
    prompting petitioner to file a petition for certiorari with the CA to assail the admission in evidence of the
    aforementioned cassette tapes.
    These tape recordings were made and obtained when private respondent allowed his friends from the
    military to wiretap his home telephone.
    CA denied the petition because (1) Tape recordings are not inadmissible per se. They and any other
    variant thereof can be admitted in evidence for certain purposes, depending on how they are presented
    and offered and on how the trial judge utilizes them in the interest of truth and fairness and the even
    handed administration of justice; and (2) A petition for certiorari is notoriously inappropriate to rectify a
    supposed error in admitting evidence adduced during trial. The ruling on admissibility is interlocutory;
    neither does it impinge on jurisdiction. If it is erroneous, the ruling should be questioned in the appeal
    from the judgment on the merits and not through the special civil action of certiorari. The error, assuming
    gratuitously that it exists, cannot be anymore than an error of law, properly correctible by appeal and not
    by certiorari.
    Petitioner then filed the present petition for review under Rule 45 of the Rules of Court.

    Issue:
    Whether or not the recordings of the telephone conversations are admissible in evidence

    Ruling:
    No. Republic Act No. 4200 entitled “An Act to Prohibit and Penalize Wire Tapping and Other Related
    Violations of the Privacy of Communication, and for other purposes” expressly makes such tape
    recordings inadmissible in evidence.
    Sec. 1. It shall be unlawful for any person, not being authorized by all the parties to any private
    communication or spoken word, to tap any wire or cable, or by using any other device or arrangement, to
    secretly overhear, intercept, or record such communication or spoken word by using a device commonly
    known as a dictaphone or dictagraph or detectaphone or walkie-talkie or tape-recorder, or however
    otherwise described. . . .
    Sec. 4. Any communication or spoken word, or the existence, contents, substance, purport, or meaning of
    the same or any part thereof, or any information therein contained, obtained or secured by any person in
    violation of the preceding sections of this Act shall not be admissible in evidence in any judicial, quasi-
    judicial, legislative or administrative hearing or investigation.
    Clearly, respondents trial court and Court of Appeals failed to consider the afore-quoted provisions of the
    law in admitting in evidence the cassette tapes in question. Absent a clear showing that both parties to
    the telephone conversations allowed the recording of the same, the inadmissibility of the subject tapes is
    mandatory under R.A. No. 4200.

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