G.R. No. L-27786. January 30, 1971. NATALIA FERNANDO, ET AL., plaintiffs-appellees, vs. ANASTACIO FRANCO, defendant-appellant.
FACTS
The plaintiffs-appellees are the heirs of Nonito Andres, a child who was run over and killed by a passenger bus on January 11, 1958. The bus was owned by defendant-appellant Anastacio Franco and driven by his employee, Leonardo Cabaron. Cabaron was criminally prosecuted for homicide through reckless imprudence. He was convicted by the trial court, and this conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals in a decision promulgated in September 1962. The criminal judgment became final thereafter.
On December 12, 1963, the heirs filed a civil complaint against the employer, Franco, seeking to enforce his subsidiary liability for the P6,000.00 civil indemnity awarded in the criminal case, along with other damages. The defendant-appellant raised the sole defense of prescription, arguing that the action was filed more than five years and eleven months after the accident occurred in 1958, and was thus barred.
ISSUE
Whether or not the civil action to enforce the employer’s subsidiary liability arising from the driver’s criminal conviction has prescribed.
RULING
No, the action has not prescribed. The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment holding the employer subsidiarily liable. The legal logic is clear: the employer’s subsidiary liability under Article 103 of the Revised Penal Code is contingent upon and derived from the final judgment of conviction against the employee. This liability is not based on an independent quasi-delict but is accessory to the criminal responsibility. Consequently, the prescriptive period for enforcing this subsidiary liability does not commence from the date of the negligent act or accident.
Instead, the cause of action against the employer accrues only upon the finality of the judgment convicting the employee. In this case, the Court of Appeals’ decision affirming the driver’s conviction became final only around October 1962. The civil action against the employer was filed on December 12, 1963, which was well within the applicable prescriptive period, being scarcely a year after the right of action accrued. The defense of prescription is therefore devoid of merit. The Court further noted that, following established doctrine, the four-year prescriptive period for quasi-delicts under Article 1146 of the Civil Code is not applicable to an action seeking to enforce an employer’s subsidiary civil liability arising from a final criminal conviction.