FIRST DIVISION
[ G.R. No. 97626, March 14, 1997 ]
PHILIPPINE BANK OF COMMERCE, NOW ABSORBED BY PHILIPPINE COMMERCIAL INTERNATIONAL BANK, ROGELIO LACSON, DIGNA DE LEON, MARIA ANGELITA PASCUAL, ET AL., PETITIONERS, VS. THE COURT OF APPEALS, ROMMEL'S MARKETING CORP., REPRESENTED BY ROMEO LIPANA, ITS PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, RESPONDENTS.
DISSENTING OPINION
PADILLA, J.:
I regret that I cannot join the majority in ruling that the proximate cause of the damage suffered by Rommel's Marketing Corporation (RMC) is mainly "the wanton and reckless negligence of the petitioner's employee in validating the incomplete duplicate deposit slips presented by Ms. Irene Yabut" (Decision, p. 15). Moreover, I find it difficult to agree with the ruling that "petitioners are entitled to claim reimbursement from her (the bank teller) for whatever they shall be ordered to pay in this case."
It seems that an innocent bank teller is being unduly burdened with what should fall on Ms. Irene Yabut, RMC's own employee, who should have been charged with estafa or estafa through falsification of private document. Interestingly, the records are silent on whether RMC had ever filed any criminal case against Ms. Irene Yabut, aside from the fact that she does not appear to have been impleaded even as a party defendant in any civil case for damages. Why is RMC insulating Ms. Irene Yabut from liability when in fact she orchestrated the entire fraud on RMC, her employer?
To set the record straight, it is not completely accurate to state that from 5 May 1975 to 16 July 1976, Miss Irene Yabut had transacted with PCIB (then PBC) through only one teller in the person of Azucena Mabayad. In fact, when RMC filed a complaint for estafa before the Office of the Provincial Fiscal of Rizal, it indicted all the tellers of PCIB in the branch who were accused of conspiracy to defraud RMC of its current account deposits. (See Annex B, Rollo, p. 22 and 47).
Even private respondent RMC, in its Comment, maintains that "when the petitioner's tellers" allowed Irene Yabut to carry out her modus operandi undetected over a period of one year, "their negligence cannot but be gross. (Rollo, p. 55; see also Rollo, pp. 58 to 59). This rules out the possibility that there may have been some form of collusion between Yabut and bank teller Mabayad. Mabayad was just unfortunate that private respondent's documentary evidence showed that she was the attending teller in the bulk of Yabut's transactions with the bank.
Going back to Yabut's modus operandi, it is not disputed that each time Yabut would transact business with PBC's tellers, she would accomplish two (2) copies of the current account deposit slip.ℒαwρhi৷ PBC's deposit slip, as issued in 1975, had two parts. The upper part was called the depositor's stub and the lower part was called the bank copy. Both parts were detachable from each other. The deposit slip was prepared and signed by the depositor or his representative, who indicated therein the current account number to which the deposit was to be credited, the name of the depositor or current account holder, the date of the deposit, and the amount of the deposit either in cash or in checks. (Rollo, p. 137)
Since Yabut deposited money in cash, the usual bank procedure then was for the teller to count whether the cash deposit tallied with the amount written down by the depositor in the deposit slip. If it did, then the teller proceeded to verify whether the current account number matched with the current account name as written in the deposit slip.
In the earlier days before the age of full computerization, a bank normally maintained a ledger which served as a repository of accounts to which debits and credits resulting from transactions with the bank were posted from books of original entry. Thus, it was only after the transaction was posted in the ledger that the teller proceeded to machine validate the deposit slip and then affix his signature or initial to serve as proof of the completed transaction.
It should be noted that the teller validated the depositor's stub in the upper portion and the bank copy on the lower portion on both the original and duplicate copies of the deposit slips presented by Yabut. The teller, however, detached the validated depositor's stub on the original deposit slip and allowed Yabut to retain the whole validated duplicate deposit slip that bore the same account number as the original deposit slip, but with the account name purposely left blank by Yabut, on the assumption that it would serve no other purpose but for a personal record to complement the original validated depositor's stub.
Thus, when Yabut wrote the name of RMC on the blank account name on the validated duplicate copy of the deposit slip, tampered with its account number, and superimposed RMC's account number, said act only served to cover-up the loss already caused by her to RMC, or after the deposit slip was validated by the teller in favor of Yabut's husband. Stated otherwise, when there is a clear evidence of tampering with any of the material entries in a deposit slip, the genuineness and due execution of the document become an issue in resolving whether or not the transaction had been fair and regular and whether the ordinary course of business had been followed by the bank.
It is logical, therefore, to conclude that the legal or proximate cause of RMC's loss was when Yabut, its employee, deposited the money of RMC in her husband's name and account number instead of that of RMC, the rightful owner of such deposited funds. Precisely, it was the criminal act of Yabut that directly caused damage to RMC, her employer, not the validation of the deposit slip by the teller as the deposit slip was made out by Yabut in her husband s name and to his account.
Even if the bank teller had required Yabut to completely fill up the duplicate deposit slip, the original deposit slip would nonetheless still be validated under the account of Yabut's husband. In fine, the damage had already been done to RMC when Yabut deposited its funds in the name and account number of her husband with petitioner bank. It is then entirely left to speculation what Yabut would have done afterwards — like tampering both the account number and the account name on the stub of the original deposit slip and on the duplicate copy — in order to cover up her crime.
Under the circumstances in this case, there was no way for PBC's bank tellers to reasonably foresee that Yabut might or would use the duplicate deposit slip to cover up her crime. In the first place, the bank tellers were absolutely unaware that a crime had already been consummated by Yabut when her transaction by her sole doing was posted in the ledger and validated by the teller in favor of her husband's account even if the funds deposited belonged to RMC.
The teller(s) in this case were not in any way proven to be parties to the crime either as accessories or accomplices. Nor could it be said that the act of posting and validation was in itself a negligent act because the teller(s) simply had no choice but to accept and validate the deposit as written in the original deposit slip under the account number and name of Yabut's husband. Hence, the act of validating the duplicate copy was not the proximate cause of RMC's injury but merely a remote cause which an independent cause or agency merely took advantage of to accomplish something which was not the probable or natural effect thereof. That explains why Yabut still had to tamper with the account number of the duplicate deposit slip after filling in the name of RMC in the blank space.
Coming now to the doctrine of "last clear chance," it is my considered view that the doctrine assumes that the negligence of the defendant was subsequent to the negligence of the plaintiff and the same must be the proximate cause of the injury. In short, there must be a last and a clear chance, not a last possible chance, to avoid the accident or injury. It must have been a chance as would have enabled a reasonably prudent man in like position to have acted effectively to avoid the injury and the resulting damage to himself.
In the case at bar, the bank was not remiss in its duty of sending monthly bank statements to private respondent RMC so that any error or discrepancy in the entries therein could be brought to the bank's attention at the earliest opportunity. Private respondent failed to examine these bank statements not because it was prevented by some cause in not doing so, but because it was purposely negligent as it admitted that it does not normally check bank statements given by banks.
It was private respondent who had the last and clear chance to prevent any further misappropriation by Yabut had it only reviewed the status of its current accounts on the bank statements sent to it monthly or regularly. Since a sizable amount of cash was entrusted to Yabut, private respondent should, at least, have taken ordinary care of its concerns, as what the law presumes. Its negligence, therefore, is not contributory but the immediate and proximate cause of its injury.
I vote to grant the petition.
The Lawphil Project - Arellano Law Foundation
