FIRST DIVISION
[G.R. No. 223127. March 25, 2019.]
MARCOPPER MINING CORP., petitioner, vs.CALANCAN BAY FISHERFOLK FEDERATION, ET AL., respondents.
NOTICE
Sirs/Mesdames :
Please take notice that the Court, First Division, issued a Resolution dated March 25, 2019which reads as follows:
"G.R. No. 223127 (MARCOPPER MINING CORP., Petitioner, v. CALANCAN BAY FISHERFOLK FEDERATION, ET AL., Respondents.) —The petitioner appeals from the decision and resolution of the Court of Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R. SP No. 134633, 1 promulgated on June 29, 2015, and February 15, 2016, respectively.
The petitioner is engaged in the mining and production of copper concentrates 2 when it was forced to stop its mining operations in Marinduque due to the spilling of mine tailings from its disposal system into the Boac and Makalupnit rivers in March 1996. 3 On July 23, 2004, the respondents, composed of persons living in the Calancan Bay area, filed a class suit against the petitioner, alleging that the petitioner intentionally dumped mine tailings into the Calancan bay, thereby exposing the residents to toxic materials. The Petitioner moved to dismiss the complaint 4 which the RTC denied. 5 The CA consequently dismissed the petition for certiorari, filed by the petitioner. 6
Here, the petitioner attributes error on the part of the CA in dismissing its petition for certiorari, maintaining that the RTC committed grave abuse of discretion in denying its motion to dismiss. The petitioner principally argues that the RTC complaint had already prescribed for having been filed beyond the four-year prescriptive period under Article 1146 of the Civil Code for actions based on quasi-delict. 7
The petition lacks merit.
An order denying a motion to dismiss is interlocutory, and may be assailed via a petition for certiorari if the order was issued: (i) without jurisdiction, or with excess of jurisdiction, or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction; (ii) and there is no appeal, or any plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. 8
The CA correctly ruled that the denial of the motion to dismiss was properly explained and the legal bases therefor were stated by the RTC. This negated any imputation of grave abuse on the part of the RTC because evidently, the petitioner's motion to dismiss was not resolved in an arbitrary, whimsical, or capricious manner. 9 ISHCcT
Moreover, the CA correctly observed that the petitioner still had the available remedy of filing its answer and proceed to the trial of the case. The denial of the motion to dismiss may later be assigned as an error on appeal of the judgment in the case. 10
However, the petitioner complained that in the resolution of its motion to dismiss, common law concepts of "discovery rule" and "continuing tort theory" were used, which it believed to have no application in this jurisdiction. 11 The thrust of such argument was intimately related to its claim that the prescriptive period should be counted or reckoned from 1991, when the alleged dumping stopped. 12
We are not persuaded.
Article 1150 of the Civil Code pertinently provides:
Art. 1150. The time for prescription for all kinds of actions, when there is no special provision which ordains otherwise, shall be counted from the day they may be brought.
It is the legal possibility of bringing the action that determines the starting point for the computation of the period of prescription. 13 Right of action, which refers to the right to commence and maintain an action, springs from the cause of action, but does not accrue until all the facts which constitute the cause of action have occurred. 14
We agree with the RTC that the respondents' complaint sufficiently contained allegations of facts, which showed that the damage and causation could not have been reasonably determined earlier. The filing of the complaint, when no causation could even be alleged, would have exposed the same to dismissal. In fact, the RTC said that the actual reckoning point, or what it considered the temporal point, 15 cannot yet be determined. This shows that there was a material factual issue that should be, and could only be determined by going through a full-blown trial.
The petitioner had also referenced a number of documents and studies 16 to show that there was no fault on its part or that the respondents had known of the ill-effects of the mine tailings much earlier. Rather than support its position, such argument only confirmed that factual issues must be determined and that the petitioner's motion to dismiss cannot simply be granted before the factual issues remain unresolved.
All told, the CA did not err in dismissing the petition for certiorari. The petitioner's claim of prescription or laches, being factual in nature that cannot yet be determined from the pleadings filed, must be properly threshed out in the trial of the case.
WHEREFORE, the Court DENIES the petition for review on certiorari for lack of merit; AFFIRMS. The decision dated June 29, 2015 and resolution dated February 15, 2016 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 134633; and ORDERS the petitioner to pay the costs of suit. CAacTH
SO ORDERED." Jardeleza, J., on official business.
Very truly yours,
(SGD.) LIBRADA C. BUENA
Division Clerk of Court
Footnotes
1.Rollo, pp. 86-95; penned by Associate Justice Jose C. Reyes, Jr. (now a Member of this Court), with the concurrence of Associate Justice Francisco P. Acosta and Associate Justice Eduardo B. Peralta, Jr.
2.Id. at 86.
3.Id. at 88.
4.Id. at 185-190.
5.Id. at 113.
6.Id. at 86-95.
7.Id. at 52-71.
8.Bañez v. Concepcion, G.R. No. 159508, August 29, 2012, 679 SCRA 237, 248.
9.Rollo, p. 94.
10.Id. at 94.
11.Id. at 60.
12.Id. at 71.
13.Tolentino v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. L-41427, June 10, 1988, 162 SCRA 66, 72.
14.Multi-Realty Development Corporation v. The Makati Tuscany Condominium Corporation, G.R. No. 146726, June 16, 2006, 491 SCRA 2, 28.
15. In this regard, the RTC's reference to the Rule on Environmental Procedure was merely to stress its point that the actual date as reckoning point cannot yet be determined.
16.Rollo, pp. 32-43.