St. Martin Funeral Home v. NLRC

Bienvenido Aricayos filed an illegal dismissal complaint before the NLRC Regional Arbitration Branch in San Fernando, Pampanga, alleging he had worked as Operations Manager of St. Martin Funeral Home from February 6, 1995 until his dismissal on January 22, 1996 for allegedly misappropriating P38,000.00 meant for VAT payments. The funeral home answered that he was not an employee but the uncle of the owner, Amelita Malabed, who, out of gratitude for financial help, had voluntarily helped Amelita's mother oversee the business; after the mother died in January 1996, Amelita took over and barred him from management. The labor arbiter found no employer-employee relationship and ruled that his office lacked jurisdiction. On appeal, the NLRC set aside that decision and remanded the case to the labor arbiter for further proceedings, and denied reconsideration. The funeral home then filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court alleging grave abuse of discretion. Before touching the merits, the Court re-examined the mode of judicial review of NLRC decisions in light of R.A. No. 7902, which had amended Section 9 of B.P. Blg. 129.

1. 1Whether, under Section 9 of B.P. Blg. 129 as amended by R.A. No. 7902, NLRC decisions are reviewable by the Supreme Court by appeal, or by a special civil action for certiorari under Rule 65.
2. 2Whether such petitions for certiorari should be filed initially with the Court of Appeals.

The petition was remanded to the Court of Appeals. The Court noted that there is no provision for appeals from NLRC decisions; the aggrieved party's remedy has been a timely motion for reconsideration followed by a Rule 65 petition for certiorari within sixty days. R.A. No. 7902 amended Section 9 of B.P. Blg. 129 by deleting the paragraph that excluded Labor Code cases from the Court of Appeals' jurisdiction, but it inserted into the exceptions to the CA's exclusive appellate jurisdiction cases falling within the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in accordance with the Labor Code. Finding this "illogical and impracticable" since no Labor Code decisions are appealable to any court, the Court examined the legislative record, including Senator Roco's sponsorship speech showing the law's purpose was to ease the Supreme Court's workload. It concluded that the special civil action of certiorari "was and still is the proper vehicle" for review of NLRC decisions, and the word "appeal" could have been a lapsus plumae. Because certiorari is within the concurrent original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, it declared that all references in amended Section 9 to supposed appeals from the NLRC to the Supreme Court "are interpreted and hereby declared to mean and refer to petitions for certiorari under Rule 65," and that such petitions "should henceforth be initially filed in the Court of Appeals in strict observance of the doctrine on the hierarchy of courts," citing Santiago v. Vasquez. The records were ordered forwarded to the Court of Appeals for disposition, without costs.