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[G.R. No. 142526. June 26, 2000]

LEO C. TABAO vs. HON. TERESITA C. LUCAS

SECOND DIVISION

Gentlemen:

Quoted hereunder, for your information, is a resolution of this Court dated JUN 26 2000.

G.R. No. 142526 (Leo C. Tabao vs. Hon. Teresita C. Lucas.)

This is a petition for review on certiorari of the decision of the Court of Appeals, dated January 17, 2000, and of its resolution, dated March 20, 2000, dismissing petitioner's appeal from the decision of the Ombudsman. Petitioner Leo C. Tabao was First Assistant City Prosecutor of Tacloban City. He filed a complaint against respondent Teresita C. Lucas, Assistant Secretary for Financial and Management Services of the Department of Justice, for withholding his salary on the ground that there was a pending administrative charge against him. The Office of the Ombudsman, in which the complaint was filed, fond respondent not guilty, although it admonished her "to be more circumspect and diligent in complying with the requirements of Budget Circular No. 15 and 16." Not satisfied, petitioner appealed to the Court of Appeals, but his appeal was dismissed on the ground that his petition was not accompanied by a duplicate original or certified true copy of the decision of the Ombudsman's office as required by Rule 3, �6 f the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure. As petitioner's motion for reconsideration was likewise denied, petitioner is now before this Court, arguing that he has complied with Rule 43, �6 because what he attached to his petition before the Court of Appeals was the copy he received from the Ombudsman's office.

The petition has no merit. It is admitted by petitioner that the copy he attached to his petition is not a certified true copy. The question is whether such copy is a duplicate original within the meaning of Rule 43, �6. The Court holds it is not. The duplicate original contemplated by the rule refers to carbon copies, not signed copies, as petitioner intimates. As explained in Mahilum v. Court of Appeals (17 SCRA 482 (1966)):

When carbon sheets are inserted between two or more sheets of writing paper so that the writing of a contract upon the outside sheet, including the signature of the party to be charged thereby, produces a facsimile upon the sheets beneath, such signature being thus reproduced by the same stroke of the pen which made the surface or exposed impression, all of the sheets so written on are regarded as duplicate originals and either of them may be introduced in evidence as such without accounting for the non-production of the others.

Of course this does not apply to carbon copies which do not include the signature made at the same time and by the same process, or which leave anything to be added before the document has been fully executed as a binding obligation, for such imperfect carbon copies would be, like letterpress copies, only secondary evidence. (5 MANUEL V. MORAN, COMMENTS ON THE RULES OF COURT 86-87 (1980))

Indeed, adoption of petitioner's theory would require this Court to do two things which it cannot: first, to take every petitioner's word that the copy of the adverse decision he is furnishing an appellate court is really a genuine copy of such decision and, second, to believe that no intercalation have been made in that copy. The very purpose of Rule 43, however, is to prevent appellate courts from making these assumptions.

For the foregoing reasons, the petition is DENIED for lack of showing that the Court of Appeals committed a reversible error.

Very truly yours,

(Sgd.) TOMASITA B. MAGAY-DRIS

Clerk of Court

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