G.R. No. 92244 – 218 SCRA 682 – Mercantile Law – Negotiable Instruments Law – Liabilities of Parties – Forgery – Forged Indorsements
Natividad Gempesaw is a businesswoman who entrusted to her bookkeeper, Alicia Galang, the preparation of checks about to be issued in the course of her business transactions. From 1984 to 1986, 82 checks amounting to P1,208,606.89, were prepared and were supposed to be delivered to Gempesaw’s clients as payees named thereon. However, through Galang, these checks were never delivered to the supposed payees. Instead, the checks were fraudulently indorsed to Alfredo Romero and Benito Lam.
ISSUE: Whether or not the bank should refund the money lost by reason of the forged indorsements.
HELD: No. Gempesaw cannot set up the defense of forgery by reason of her negligence. As a rule, a drawee bank (in this case the Philippine Bank of Communications) who has paid a check on which an indorsement has been forged cannot charge the drawer’s (Gempesaw’s) account for the amount of said check. An exception to this rule is where the drawer is guilty of such negligence which causes the bank to honor such a check or checks. If a check is stolen from the payee, it is quite obvious that the drawer cannot possibly discover the forged indorsement by mere examination of his cancelled check. A different situation arises where the indorsement was forged by an employee or agent of the drawer, or done with the active participation of the latter.
The negligence of a depositor which will prevent recovery of an unauthorized payment is based on failure of the depositor to act as a prudent businessman would under the circumstances. In the case at bar, Gempesaw relied implicitly upon the honesty and loyalty of Galang, and did not even verify the accuracy of amounts of the checks she signed against the invoices attached thereto. Furthermore, although she regularly received her bank statements, she apparently did not carefully examine the same nor the check stubs and the returned checks, and did not compare them with the same invoices. Otherwise, she could have easily discovered the discrepancies between the checks and the documents serving as bases for the checks. With such discovery, the subsequent forgeries would not have been accomplished. It was not until two years after Galang commenced her fraudulent scheme that Gempesaw discovered that eighty-two (82) checks were wrongfully charged to her account, at which she notified the Philippine Bank of Communications.
