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VOL. 186, JUNE 18, 1990 569
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
*
G.R. No. 78617. June 18, 1990.
SALVADOR LAZO, petitioner, vs. EMPLOYEES’
COMPENSATION COMMISSION & GOVERNMENT
SERVICE INSURANCE SYSTEM (CENTRAL BANK OF
THE PHILIPPINES), respondents.
Workmen’s Compensation; Labor Law; Central Bank security
guard, who was granted permission to leave his post so he could
bring home a sack of rice and who met an accident along the way,
is entitled to workmen’s compensation under P.D. 626.—In the
case at bar, it can be seen that petitioner left his station at the
Central Bank several hours after his regular time off, because the
reliever did not arrive, and so petitioners was asked to go on
overtime. After permission to leave was
_______________
10 Ibid., p. 203.
* SECOND DIVISION.
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570 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
given, he went home. There is no evidence on record that
petitioner deviated from his usual, regular homeward route or
that interruptions occurred in the journey. While the presumption
of compensability and theory of aggravation under the Workmen’s
Compensation Act (under which the Baldebrin case was decided)
may have been abandoned under the New Labor Code, it is
significant that the liberality of the law in general in favor of the
workingman still subsists. As agent charged by the law to
implement social justice guaranteed and secured by the
Constitution, the Employees Compensation Commission should
adopt a liberal attitude in favor of the employee in deciding claims
for compensability, especially where there is some basis in the
facts for inferring a work connection to the accident.
Same; Same; P.D. 626 should be interpreted liberally.—We
are constrained not to consider the defense of the street peril
doctrine and instead interpret the law liberally in favor of the
employee because the Employees Compensation Act, like the
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Workmen’s Compensation Act, is basically a social legislation
designed to afford relief to the working men and women in our
society.
APPEAL from the decision of the Employees’
Compensation Commission.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the Court.
Oscar P. Paguinto for petitioner.
PADILLA, J.:
This is an appeal from the decision of the respondent
Employees Compensation Commission (ECC) in ECC Case
No. 2883 which affirmed the dismissal of petitioner’s claim
for compensation against the Government Service
Insurance System (GSIS).
The petitioner, Salvador Lazo, is a security guard of the
Central Bank of the Philippines assigned to its main office
in Malate, Manila. His regular tour of duty is from 2:00
o’clock in the afternoon to 10:00 o’clock in the evening. On
18 June 1986, the petitioner rendered duty from 2:00
o’clock in the afternoon to 10:00 o’clock in the evening. But,
as the security guard who was to relieve him failed to
arrive, the petitioner rendered overtime duty up to 5:00
o’clock in the morning of 19 June 1986, when he asked
permission from his superior to leave early in order to take
home to Binangonan, Rizal, his sack of rice.
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VOL. 186, JUNE 18, 1990 571
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
On his way home, at about 6:00 o’clock in the morning of 19
June 1986, the passenger jeepney the petitioner was riding
on turned turtle due to slippery road. As a result, he
sustained injuries and was taken to the Angono Emergency
Hospital for treatment. He was later transferred to the
National Orthopedic Hospital where he was confined until
25 July 1986.
For the injuries he sustained, petitioner filed a claim for
disability benefits under PD 626, as amended. His claim,
however, was denied by the GSIS for the reason that—
“It appears that after performing your regular duties as Security
Guard from 2:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. on June 18, 1986, you
rendered overtime duty from 10:00 P.M. to 5:06 A.M. of the
following day; that at about 5:06 A.M. after asking permission
from your superior you were allowed to leave the Office to do
certain personal matter—that of bringing home a sack of rice and
that, while on your way home, you met a vehicular accident that
resulted to (sic) your injuries. From the foregoing informations, it
is evident that you were not at your 1
work place performing your
duties when the incident occurred.”
It was held that the condition for compensability had not
been satisfied.
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Upon review of the case, the respondent Employees
Compensation Commission affirmed the decision since the
accident which involved the petitioner occurred far from his
work place and while he was attending to a personal
matter.
Hence, the present recourse.
The petitioner contends that the injuries he sustained
due to the vehicular accident on his way home from work
should be construed as “arising out of or in the course of
employment” and thus, compensable. In support of his
prayer for the reversal of the decision, the petitioner cites
the case of Pedro
2
Baldebrin vs. Workmen’s Compensation
Commission, where the Court awarded compensation to
the petitioner therein who figured in an accident on his
way home from his official station at Pagadian City to his
place of residence at Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur. In the
accident, petitioner’s left eye was bit by a pebble while he
was riding on a bus.
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1 Annex “B” Rollo at p. 7.
2 G.R. No. L-43792, October 12, 1984, 132 SCRA 510.
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572 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
Respondents claim that the Baldebrin ruling is a deviation
from cases earlier decided and hence, not applicable to the
present case.
The Court has carefully considered the petition and the
arguments of the parties and finds that the petitioner’s
submission is meritorious.
Liberally interpreting the employees compensation law
to give effect
3
to its compassionate 4 spirit as a social
legislation, in Vda. de Torbela v. ECC, the Court held:
“It is a fact that Jose P. Torbela, Sr. died on March 3, 1975 at
about 5:45 o’clock in the morning due to Injuries sustained by him
in a vehicular accident while he was on his way to school from
Bacolod City, where he lived, to Hinigaran, Negros Occidental
where the school of which he was the principal was located and
that at the time of the accident he had in his possession official
papers he allegedly worked on in his residence on the eve of his
death. The claim is compensable. When an employee is
accidentally injured at a point reasonably proximate to the place
at work, while he is going to and from his work, such injury is
deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of his
employment.”
5
Again in Alano v. ECC, it was reiterated:
“Dedicacion de Vera, a government employee during her lifetime,
worked as principal of Salinap Community School in San Carlos
City, Pangasinan. Her tour of duty was from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30
p.m. On November 29, 1976, at 7:00 A.M., while she was waiting
for a ride at Plaza Jaycee in San Carlos City on her way to the
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school, she was bumped and run over by a speeding Toyota mini-
bus which resulted in her instantaneous death, x x x”
“In this case, it is not disputed that the deceased died while
going to her place of work. She was at the place where, as the
petitioner puts it, her job necessarily required her to be if she was
to reach her place of work on time. There was nothing private or
personal about the school principal’s being at the place of the
accident. She was there because her employment required her to
be there.”
_______________
3 Clemente v. WCC, G.R. No. L-42087, 8 April 1988, 159 SCRA 492.
4 G.R. No. L-42627, February 21, 1980, 96 SCRA 260.
5 G.R. No. L-48594, March 16, 1988, 158 SCRA 670.
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VOL. 186, JUNE 18, 1990 573
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
6
More recently, in Vano vs. GSIS & ECC, this Court,
applying the above quoted decisions, enunciated:
“Filomeno Vano was a letter carrier of the Bureau of Posts in
Tagbilaran City. On July 31, 1983, a Sunday, at around 3:30 p.m.
Vano was driving his motorcycle with his son as backrider
allegedly on his way to his station in Tagbilaran for his work the
following day, Monday. As they were approaching Hinawanan
Bridge in Loay, Bohol, the motorcycle skidded, causing its
passengers to be thrown overboard. Vano’s head hit the bridge’s
railing which rendered him unconscious. He was taken to the
Engelwood Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival due to
severe hemorrhage.
“We see no reason to deviate from the foregoing rulings. Like
the deceased in these two (2) aforementioned cases, it was
established that petitioner’s husband in the case at bar was on his
way to his place of work when he met the accident. His death,
therefore, is compensable under the law as an employment
accident.”
In the above cases, the employees were on their way to
work. In the case at bar, petitioner had come from work
and was on his way home, just like in the Baldebrin case,
where the employee “x x x figured in an accident when he
was going home from his official station at Pagadian City
to 7his place of residence at Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur x x
x.”
In Baldebrin, the Court said:
‘The principal issue is whether petitioner’s injury comes within
the meaning of and intendment of the phrase ‘arising out of and
in the course of employment.’ (Section 2, Workmen’s
Compensation Act). In Philippine Engineer’s Syndicate, Inc. vs.
Flora S. Martin and Workmen’s Compensation Commission, 4
SCRA 356, We held that “where an employee, after working
hours, attempted to ride on the platform of a service truck of the
company near his place of work, and, while thus attempting,
slipped and fell to the ground and was run over by the truck,
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resulting in his death, the accident may be said to have arisen out
of or in the course of employment, for which reason his death is
compensable. The fact standing alone, that the truck was in
motion when the employee boarded, is insufficient to justify the
conclusion that he had been notoriously negligent, where it does
not appear that
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6 G.R. No. 81327, December 4, 1989.
7 See Baldebrin supra.
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Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
the truck was running at a great speed.’ And, in a later case, Iloilo
Dock & Engineering Co. vs. Workmen’s Compensation
Commission, 26 SCRA 102, 103, We ruled that ‘(e)mployment
includes not only the actual doing of the work, but a reasonable
margin of time and space necessary to be used in passing to and
from the place where the work is to be done. If the employee be
injured while passing, with the express or implied consent of the
employer, to or from his work by a way over the employer’s
premises, or over those of another in such proximity and relation
as to be in practical effect a part of the employer’s premises, the
injury is one arising out of and in the course of the employment as
much as though it had happened while the employee was engaged
in his work at the place of its performance.’ ” (Italics supplied)
In the case at bar, it can be seen that petitioner left his
station at the Central Bank several hours after his regular
time off, because the reliever did not arrive, and so
petitioner was asked to go on overtime. After permission to
leave was given, he went home. There is no evidence on
record that petitioner deviated from his usual, regular
homeward route or that interruptions occurred in the
journey.
While the presumption of compensability and theory of
aggravation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act
(under which the Baldebrin case was decided) may 8
have
been abandoned under the New Labor Code, it is
significant that the liberality of the law in general in favor
of the workingman still subsists. As agent charged by the
law to implement social justice guaranteed and secured by
the Constitution, the Employees Compensation
Commission should adopt a liberal attitude in favor of the
employee iii deciding claims for compensability, especially
where there is some basis in the facts for inferring a work
connection to the accident.
This kind of interpretation gives meaning and substance
to the compassionate spirit of the law as embodied in
Article 4 of the New Labor Code which states that “all
doubts in the implementation and interpretation of the
provisions of the Labor Code including its implementing
rules and regulations shall be resolved in favor of labor.”
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_______________
8 PD 626—promulgated on 1 January 1975, further amended by PD
1368 on 1 May 1978.
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VOL. 186, JUNE 18, 1990 575
Lazo vs. Employees’ Compensation Commission
The policy then is to extend the applicability of the decree
(PD 626) to as many employees who can avail of the
benefits thereunder. This is in consonance with the avowed
policy9 of the State to give maximum aid and protection to
labor.
There is no reason, in principle, why employees should
not be protected for a reasonable period of time prior to or
after working hours and for a reasonable distance 10
before
reaching or after leaving the employer’s premises.
If the Vano ruling awarded compensation to an
employee who was on his way from home to his work
station one day before an official working day, there is no
reason to deny compensation for accidental injury occurring
while he is on his way home one hour after he had left his
work station.
We are constrained not to consider the defense of the
street peril doctrine and instead interpret the law liberally
in favor of the employee because the Employees
Compensation Act, like the Workmen’s Compensation Act,
is basically a social legislation designed to afford relief to
the working men and women in our society.
WHEREFORE, the decision appealed from is
REVERSED and SET ASIDE. Let the case be remanded to
the ECC and the GSIS for disposition in accordance with
this decision.
SO ORDERED.
Melendo-Herrera (Chairman), Paras, Sarmiento
and Regalado, JJ., concur.
Decision reversed and set aside.
Notes.—Under P.D. 626, as amended, the listed
occupational disease are compensable when the conditions
therein contained are met. Certain diseases are also
compensable where complainant can prove that the risks of
contracting the disease are increased by working
conditions. (Acosta vs. Employees Compensation
Commission, 109 SCRA 209).
_______________
9 Carbajal v. Government Service Insurance System, G.R. No. L-46654,
August 9, 1988, 164 SCRA 204.
10 Cudahy Packing Co. v. Parramore, 263 U.S. 418 [1923] and Papineau
v. Industrial Accident Commission, 187 Pac. 108.
576
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576 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED
People vs. Alfonso
Pancreatitis whose causes are still unknown, is not
compensable. (Villavert vs. Employees Compensation
Commission, 110 SCRA 233)
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