G.R. No. 193978 – 683 Phil. 141 – 667 SCRA 150 – Political Law – Constitutional Law – The Judicial Department – Judicial Review – Requisites; Locus Standi – Locus Standi of Lawyers to Question Constitutionality of Laws; When not applicable
In 2010, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III issued E.O. No. 7 which stopped all increases in the salaries and other forms of compensations of all employees of government owned and controlled corporations and government financial institutions. The moratorium is until the end of 2010.
Atty. Jelbert Galicto, a legal officer of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), filed a petition for certiorari questioning the constitutionality of EO 7.
Galicto’s legal standing to file the petition was questioned. Galicto argued that he has legal standing because he stands to be directly injured by the EO as his benefits will be prejudiced by the EO. Galicto also invokes that he is filing the petition as a member of the IBP who has an interest in ensuring that all laws and regulations were validly issued.
ISSUE: Whether or not the petition must prosper.
HELD: No. Firstly, certiorari is not the proper remedy. The EO was not issued by a judicial nor a quasi-judicial body. It was issued by the executive. Petitions for Certiorari and Prohibition are availed of to question judicial, quasi-judicial and mandatory acts.
The action may be deemed as an action for declaratory relief but since the hierarchy of courts was ignored by Galicto, his petition is just the same dismissed. The SC only has appellate jurisdiction in declaratory relief cases in accordance with Sec. 5, Art. VIII:
The Supreme Court shall have the following powers: xxx
(2) Review, revise, reverse, modify, or affirm on appeal or certiorari as the law or the Rules of Court may provide, final judgments and orders of lower courts in:
(a) All cases in which the constitutionality or validity of any treaty, international or executive agreement, law, presidential decree, proclamation, order, instruction, ordinance, or regulation is in question.
Secondly, Galicto has no legal standing. He does not stand to be injured by the EO. The requisites of locus standi are:
(1) there is a showing that the petitioner will personally suffer some actual or threatened injury because of the allegedly illegal conduct of the government;
(2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action; and
(3) the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable action
Here, Galicto’s interest is merely an expectancy or a future, contingent, subordinate, or consequential interest. The curtailment of future increases in his salaries and other benefits are mere contingent events or expectancies. He has no vested rights to salary increases.
Nor can he sue as a member of the IBP. The claim that he is filing to ensure the validity of laws is too general an interest which is shared by other groups and by the whole citizenry. The alleged duty to protect the law, without nothing more, is not sufficient to clothe one with legal standing.
SIDE ISSUE: Galicto likewise invoked the Doctrine of Transcendental Importance or Paramount Public Interest; that the issue on the President’s power to fix the compensation of employees of the GOCCs and GFIs has far reaching implications. Is the invocation valid?
HELD: No. His petition is too defective. In fact, there was also an improper jurat. It is true that the SC has taken an increasingly liberal approach on locus standi but the procedural infirmities in this case do not warrant the SC’s liberality.
