Salazar 92 SCRA 1
FACTS:
Two separate Petitions were filed before this Court by the surviving partners of Atty.
Alexander Sycip, who died on May 5, 1975, and by the surviving partners of Atty.
Herminio Ozaeta, who died on February 14, 1976, praying that they be allowed to
continue using, in the names of their firms, the names of partners who had passed
away.
Petitioners argued that:
under the law, a partnership is not prohibited from continuing its business under
a firm name which includes the name of a deceased partner; in fact, Article 1840
of the Civil Code explicitly sanctions the practice.
Second, The Canons of Professional Ethics are not transgressed by the continued
use of the name of a deceased partner in the firm name of a law partnership
because Canon 33 of the Canons of Professional Ethics adopted by the American
Bar Association declares that: ". . . The continued use of the name of a deceased
or former partner permissible by local custom, is not unethical, but care should
be taken that no imposition or deception is practiced through this use. . . ."
Third, there is no possibility of imposition or deception because the deaths of
their respective deceased partners were well-publicized in all newspapers of
general circulation for several days.
Fourth, no local custom prohibits the continued use of a deceased partner’s
name in a professional firm’s name; there is no custom or usage in the
Philippines, or at least in the Greater Manila Area, which recognizes that the
name of a law firm necessarily identifies the individual members of the firm.
Lastly, the continued use of a deceased partner's name in the firm name of law
partnerships has been consistently allowed by U.S. Courts and is an accepted
practice in the legal profession of most countries in the world.
ISSUE:
Whether or not the surviving partners may be allowed to retain the name of the
partners who already passed away in the name of the firm.
RULING
NO. In as much as "Sycip, Salazar, Feliciano, Hernandez and Castillo" and "Ozaeta,
Romulo, De Leon, Mabanta and Reyes" are partnerships, the use in their partnership names of
the names of deceased partners will run counter to Article 1815 of the Civil Code which
provides: "Art. 1815. Every partnership shall operate under a firm name, which may or may not
include the name of one or more of the partners. "Those who, not being members of the
partnership include their names in the firm name, shall be subject to the liability of a partner."
It is clearly tacit in the above provision that names in a firm name of a partnership must
either be those of living partners and, in the case of non-partners, should be living persons who
can be subjected to liability. In fact, Article 1825 of the Civil Code prohibits a third person from
including his name in the firm name under pain of assuming the liability of a partner. The heirs
of a deceased partner in a law firm cannot be held liable as the old members to the creditors of
a firm particularly where they are non-lawyers.
An able lawyer without connections will have to make a name for himself starting from
scratch. Another able lawyer, who can join an old firm, can initially ride on that old firm's
reputation established by deceased partners
It is true that Canon 33 does not consider as unethical the continued use of the
name of a deceased or former partner in the firm name of a law partnership when
such a practice is permissible by local custom but the Canon warns that care should
be taken that no imposition or deception is practiced through this use. The
possibility of deception upon the public, real or consequential, where the name of a
deceased partner continues to be used cannot be ruled out
