G.R. No. 100335. April 7, 1993.
UNCIANO PARAMEDICAL COLLEGE, INC. (now UNCIANO COLLEGES & GENERAL HOSPITAL, INC.); MIRANDO C. UNCIANO, SR., DOMINADOR SANTOS AND EDITHA MORA, petitioners, vs. THE COURT OF APPEALS, Honorable LOURDES K. TAYAO-JAGUROS, in her capacity as Presiding Judge, Regional Trial Court, Branch 21, Manila; ELENA VILLEGAS thru VICTORIA VILLEGAS; and TED MAGALLANES thru JACINTA MAGALLANES, respondents.

FACTS

Private respondents Elena Villegas and Ted Magallanes, nursing students at petitioner Unciano Paramedical College, Inc., were barred from enrolling for the second semester of school year 1989-1990. The school accused them of harassing a female student, inviting an outsider to speak, being members of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and the League of Filipino Students (LFS), and being “drug addicts,” without providing concrete proof. The students, through their counsel, demanded due process. Several meetings were held but were inconclusive, and the school’s Board of Trustees ultimately refused to allow their enrollment. The students filed a petition for injunction and damages with a prayer for a writ of preliminary mandatory injunction before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) to compel their enrollment. The RTC granted the writ, ordering the school to allow the students to enroll for the first semester of school year 1990-1991 upon posting a bond. The Court of Appeals dismissed the school’s petition for certiorari, relying on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Non vs. Dames II, which had abandoned the earlier doctrine in Alcuaz vs. PSBA that a student’s contract with a school terminates at the end of a semester.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of Appeals erred in applying the new doctrine established in Non vs. Dames II retroactively to justify the issuance of the writ of preliminary mandatory injunction, and whether the issuance of said writ was proper.

RULING

The Supreme Court GRANTED the petition. It set aside the decision and resolution of the Court of Appeals, as well as the RTC’s orders and the writ of preliminary mandatory injunction.
1. On the application of the new doctrine, the Court held that under the rule in People vs. Jabinal, when a doctrine is overruled and a different view is adopted, the new doctrine should be applied prospectively and should not apply to parties who had relied on the old doctrine and acted in faith thereof. At the time petitioners barred the students from enrolling (late 1989 to early 1990), the prevailing doctrine was Alcuaz vs. PSBA, which held that a student’s contract with a school terminates at the end of a semester. Petitioners acted under this doctrine. Therefore, the Court of Appeals erred in applying the subsequently promulgated Non vs. Dames II doctrine to the petitioners’ actions.
2. On the propriety of the writ of preliminary mandatory injunction, the Court, citing Capitol Medical Center, Inc. vs. Court of Appeals, ruled that such a writ’s sole object is to preserve the status quo—the last actual peaceable uncontested status preceding the controversy. A mandatory injunction, which commands the performance of an act, is generally improper prior to final hearing unless in cases of extreme urgency where the right is very clear. In this case, the status quo was the valid termination of the contract between the parties at the end of the first semester of school year 1989-1990 (October 1989). The RTC’s writ, which ordered the students’ enrollment for the first semester of 1990-1991, did not preserve this status quo but sought to re-establish a pre-existing relation that had already been terminated. The private respondents did not possess a clear legal right to re-enroll at the time the writ was issued.