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*
G.R. No. 102206. June 25, 1993.

NATIONAL POWER CORPORATION and BENJAMIN CHAVEZ,

petitioners, vs. THE COURT OF APPEALS, LAURO PALAD,
JOSE PALAD, DOMINGO CRUZ, EMILIA MARIANO,
RAYMUNDO PALAD and FRANCISCO C. TORRES, respondents.

Civil Law; Negligence; The losses and damages sustained by the

private respondents had been proximately caused by the negligence of the
petitioners although the typhoon which preceded the flooding could be
considered as a force majeure.—As we stated in the exordium of this
ponencia, petitioners have raised the same issues and defenses as in the
other two decided cases therein mentioned. Predictably therefore, this
petition must perforce be dismissed because the losses and damages
sustained by the private respondents had been proximately caused by the
negligence of the petitioners, although the typhoon which preceded the
flooding could be considered as a force majeure.

Same; Same; Court ruled that the doctrine laid down in Juan F. Nakpil
& Sons vs. Court of Appeals was correctly applied by the appellate court.—
In our decision in G.R. No. 96410, we ruled that the doctrine laid down in
Juan F. Nakpil & Sons vs. Court of Appeals was correctly applied by the
appellate court. In the instant case, the respondent Court relied on our 1988
decision in National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals. It must be
emphasized that the latter decision applied and reiterated the ruling in the
Nakpil case.

Remedial Law; Appeal; The evaluation of the testimony of witnesses by

the trial court is received on appeal with the highest respect.—“It is
doctrinally entrenched that the evaluation of the testimony of witnesses by
the trial court is received on appeal with the highest respect because it is the
trial court that has the direct opportunity to observe them on the stand and
detect if they are telling the truth or lying through their teeth. The
assessment is accepted as correct by the appellate court—is indeed binding
upon it—in the absence of a clear showing that it was reached arbitrarily.”

PETITION for review of the decision of the Court of Appeals.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Court.

________________

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* THIRD DIVISION.

650

650 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED

National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

     Valeriano Mariano for respondents.

DAVIDE, JR., J.:

In the previous cases of National Power Corporation vs. Court of

1
Appeals (G.R. No. 96410) and National Power Corporation vs.
2
Court of Appeals (G.R. Nos. 103442-45), this Court ruled that the
inundation of the towns neighboring the Angat Dam, particularly
Norzagaray, Bulacan, at the height of typhoon “Kading” in the
evening of 26 October 1978 up to the early morning of 27 October
1978, was due to the negligence of the petitioners therein.
Accordingly, since such negligence was the proximate cause of the
losses and damages sustained by the private respondents, the said
petitioners were adjudged liable therefor. The issues and defenses
raised in those cases by the petitioners are the very same ones set
forth in the instant petition. Hence, the outcome of this case and the
fate of the petitioners are fairly easy to predict. The private
respondents, owners of different parcels of land in Angat and
Norzagaray, Bulacan, suffered extensive damage to and loss of their
properties as a result of the inundation abovementioned, to wit:

“Lauro Palad - P42,500.00

Jose Palad - 59,900.00
Domingo Cruz - 25,000.00
Matias Castillo - 5,000.00
Emilia Mariano - 9,500.00
Raymundo Palad - 19,000.00
3
Francisca Torres   18,000.00”

Their demands for the payment thereof having been rejected by the
petitioners, the private respondents filed on 25 October 1982 with
the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Malolos, Bulacan an action for
damages against the petitioners. The case was docketed as Civil
Case No. SM-1338 and raffled off to Branch 22 of the said court.

________________

1 211 SCRA 162 [1992].

2 21 May 1993.
3 CA Decision, 3; Rollo, 31.

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VOL. 223, JUNE 25, 1993 651

National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

In their Answer, the petitioners allege, inter alia, that they took all
the necessary precautions in anticipation of the typhoon, exercised
due care in the maintenance and operation of the Angat Hydro-
electric plant and sent out early written warnings in the morning of
24 October 1978 to the towns of Norzagaray, Angat, Bustos,
Plaridel, Baliwag and Calumpit, Bulacan. They further rely on the
defense of force majeure, and aver that there exists no causal
relation between the alleged damages and losses suffered by the
plaintiffs and the act or omission attributed to them; that they acted
in accordance with law, properly exercised their legal rights and
performed their duties, any damage incurred by the plaintiffs being
damnum absque injuria; and that the plaintiffs had the last clear
chance4to avoid damage. They also assert that the action is barred by
laches.
After trial, the RTC rendered its decision against the petitioners
on 18 June 1990; the dispositive portion thereof reads as follows:

“Wherefore, in view of the foregoing, judgment is hereby rendered ordering

the defendants to pay the plaintiffs the following:

1. Actual damages to following plaintiffs: Jose Palad—P59,900.00

and Emilia Mariano—P9,500.00. With regards (sic) to the claims of
the other plaintiffs; Lauro Palad—P42,500.00, Domingo Cruz—
P25,000.00, Raymundo Palad—P19,000.00 and Francisca C.
Torres—P18,000.00, the defendants are ordered to pay them.
2. Moral damages of P30,000.00 to each of the plaintiffs with legal
interest from the promulgation of judgment until the obligation is
fully paid.
3. And attorney’s fees amounting to 2.5% of whatever is collected
from the defendants.
5
SO ORDERED.”

In due course, the petitioners appealed the said decision to the

respondent Court which docketed the appeal as CA-G.R. CV No.
27985.

________________

4 RTC Decision, 3; Rollo, 66.

5 Id., 83.

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652 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED

National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

6
In its decision promulgated on 16 August 1991, the appellate court
affirmed the findings of the trial court on the negligence of the
petitioners and, relying on the doctrine 7
enunciated in National
Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals “that when the negligence
of a person concurs with an act of God in producing a loss, such
person is not exempt from liability by showing that the immediate
cause of the damage was the act of God,” affirmed the award of
actual damages in favor of the private respondents. It, however,
deleted the award of moral damages because it concluded that there
was no malice or bad faith on the part of the petitioners, and reduced
the attorney’s fees to a fixed sum of P5,000.00.
The Court of Appeals considered as negligent the petitioners act
of opening the spillway gates of the dam abruptly at midnight of 26
October 1978, instead of gradually in the morning of the same day
when they had already expected heavy rains. It was this sudden
opening of the gates which resulted in the flooding of the nearby
towns. As determined by the respondent Court:

“We can understand why no spilling of water from the dam was made by
appellants on October 24, 1978 considering that according to the
newspapers, the direction of the coming typhoon was towards the Bicol
region. But in the morning of October 25, 1978, there was already a weather
forecast published in the newspapers that the typhoon was heading towards
Metro Manila and Central Luzon, which necessarily included Bulacan
province and the area of the Angat dam. Appellants should have then started
gradually spilling water from the dam into the Angat River in anticipation of
the abnormal rise of the water level in the dam with the coming typhoon
which could cause the dam to overflow. We see it then as negligence on the
part of defendants to delay the spilling of water from the dam, for as the
NBI Report Exh. “2” reveals, appellant Chavez already wanted to start
opening the dam’s flood gates because of the fast rise in the water level
therein at about 10:45 o’clock in the morning of October 26, 1978, but he
did not use his discretion on the matter but even sought permission to do so
from Armando Plata and Fenoldo Eleazer, managers of the Generation

________________

6 Rollo, 29-43. Per Associate Justice Alicia V. Sempio-Diy concurred in by Associate

Justices Vicente V. Mendoza and Oscar M. Herrera.
7 161 SCRA 334 [1988].

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National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

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Division and Operation Division, respectively, and it was only at 5:40

o’clock in the afternoon that approval of the request was confirmed. And
while appellant Chavez testified that the water level in the dam was rising
very fast (p. 29, tsn, id), he still waited up to 9:00 o’clock in the evening of
the same day of October 26, 1978 before he started opening the reservoir’s
spillway gates which he did from 9:00 p.m. to 12 o’clock midnight, starting
with an opening of 1 meter for each gate, gradually increasing the openings
of 5 mts., until the maximum opening of 14 mts. was reached by 12 o’clock
midnight x x x. Hence, the uncontradicted testimonies of the witnesses for
the plaintiffs that the flood occurred between 1 to 2 o’clock a.m., the water
rising so fast within the period of only 10 minutes from knee level to up to
the neck, and that the flood was already under control and the water had
stopped rising by 3:00 a.m. All these prove that the unusual flood that
occurred between 1 and 2 o’clock a.m. on October 26, 1978 and which
destroyed plaintiffs’ properties, was not brought about by the rain waters
that came with typhoon ‘Kading’ but by appellants’ delayed opening of the
8
spillway gates x x x.”

In view of the denial of their motion for reconsideration

9
by the
public respondent in its Resolution of 2 October 1991, petitioners
filed the instant petition which they support with the following
assignment of errors:

“I THE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN HOLDING THAT

THE RULING IN THE CASE OF NATIONAL POWER
CORPORATION v. C.A., ET AL., 161 SCRA 334, IS
APPLICABLE IN THE INSTANT CASE UNDER
WHICH PETITIONERS ARE LIABLE EVEN THOUGH
THE COMING OF THE TYPHOON WAS FORCE
MAJEURE.
II. THE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN NOT HOLDING
THAT THE GIVING OF WRITTEN NOTICE OF
WARNING BY PETITIONERS ABSOLVED THEM
FROM LIABILITY.
III. THE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN NOT HOLDING
THAT ANY DAMAGE SUFFERED BY RESPONDENTS
WAS DAMNUM ABSQUE INJURIA.

________________

8 Rollo, 36-37.
9 Id., 44.

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National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

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IV. THE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN NOT

AWARDING THE COUNTERCLAIM OF THE
PETITIONERS FOR ATTORNEY’S FEES AND
10
EXPENSES OF LITIGATION.”
11
On 18 May 1991, in compliance with our Resolution of 10
12
February 1992, the private respondents filed their Comment to the
petition. Thereupon,
13
we gave due course to the petition on 12
August 1992.
As we stated in the exordium of this ponencia, petitioners have
raised the same issues and defenses as in the other two decided cases
therein mentioned. Predictably therefore, this petition must perforce
be dismissed because the losses and damages sustained by the
private respondents had been proximately caused by the negligence
of the petitioners, although the typhoon which preceded the flooding
could be considered as a force majeure. Thus, we simply reiterate
our statements in G.R. Nos. 103442-45 (National Power
14
Corporation vs. Court of Appeals):

“Accordingly, petitioners cannot be heard to invoke the act of God or force

majeure to escape liability for the loss or damage sustained by the private
respondents since they, the petitioners, were guilty of negligence. This event
then was not occasioned exclusively by an act of God or force majeure; a
human factor—negligence or imprudence—had intervened. The effect then
of the force majeure in question may be deemed to have, even if only partly,
resulted from the participation of man. Thus, the whole occurrence was
thereby humanized, as it were, and removed from the rules applicable to
acts of God.”
15
In our decision in G.R. No. 96410, we ruled that the doctrine laid
16
down in Juan F. Nakpil & Sons vs. Court of Appeals was correctly
applied by the appellate court. In the instant case, the respondent
Court relied on our 1988 decision in National Power

________________

10 Rollo, 14.
11 Id., 94.
12 Id., 88.
13 Id., 112.
14 Supra, footnote No. 2.
15 Supra, footnote No. 1.
16 144 SCRA 596 [1986].

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National Power Corporation vs. Court of Appeals

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17
Corporation vs. Court of Appeals. It must be emphasized that the
latter decision applied and reiterated the ruling in the Nakpil case.
One final point. In resisting the findings which underscore their
negligence, petitioners would have this Court appreciate in their
favor the report of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI)
(Exhibit “2”) that petitioner Chavez committed no fault or
negligence. This NBI report has no probative value whatsoever. It
18
appears in the decision of the trial court in Civil Case No. 1338 that
the identity and contents of the same were verified by Jose S.
Ramos, Manager of the Trial and Litigation Division, Office of the
19
General Counsel for petitioner NPC, and not by any officer of the
NBI, much less the officer who conducted the investigation or
prepared the report. Besides, the said report was not based on
evidence of opposing parties. The private respondents do not appear
to have been investigated by the NBI. On the other hand, the trial
court, before reaching its verdict, received the evidence of the
contending parties and evaluated their testimonies on the basis of
their story, paying particular attention to their credibility. “It is
doctrinally entrenched that the evaluation of the testimony of
witnesses by the trial court is received on appeal with the highest
respect because it is the trial court that has the direct opportunity to
observe them on the stand and detect if they are telling the truth or
lying through their teeth. The assessment is accepted as correct by
the appellate court—is indeed binding upon it—in 20
the absence of a
clear showing that it was reached arbitrarily.” Thus, the public
respondent acted correctly in not giving credit to the NBI report.
WHEREFORE, finding no reversible error in the challenged
decision of the public respondent in CA-G.R. CV No. 27985, the
instant petition is hereby DENIED, with costs against the
petitioners.

________________

17 Supra, footnote No. 7.

18 RTC Decision, 1-21; Rollo, 64-83.
19 Id., 77.
20 People vs. Santito, 201 SCRA 87, 94 [1991], citing People vs. Manalansan, 189
SCRA 619 [1990].

656

656 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED

Radio Communications of the Phils., Inc. vs. NLRC

SO ORDERED.

     Feliciano (Chairman), Bidin, Romero and Melo, JJ., concur.

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Petition denied.

Note.—A person is expected to take ordinary care of his affairs

(Quality Tobacco Corporation vs. Intermediate Appellate Court, 187
SCRA 210).

——o0o——

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