GR L 18255; (November,1961) (Digest)
G.R. No. L-18255; November 21, 1961
JOSE T. GONZALES, petitioner, vs. THE COURT OF APPEALS and JAIME M. FLORES, respondents.
FACTS
Jose T. Gonzales and Jaime M. Flores were candidates for vice-mayor of Butuan City in the 1959 elections. Flores was proclaimed the winner. Gonzales filed an election protest with the Court of First Instance of Agusan, which, after trial, declared Gonzales the duly elected vice-mayor. Flores then filed an amended notice of appeal to the Court of Appeals, stating his appeal was on questions of both fact and law, except for findings on ballot tampering.
Gonzales moved to dismiss the appeal in the Court of Appeals, arguing that no statutory right to appeal existed for election contests involving the office of city vice-mayor. The appellate court denied his motion via a minute resolution. Gonzales subsequently filed the instant petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeals’ order giving due course to the appeal.
ISSUE
Whether the Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from a decision of the Court of First Instance in an election contest for the position of city vice-mayor.
RULING
No. The Court of Appeals acted without jurisdiction. The Supreme Court granted the petition, set aside the resolution of the Court of Appeals, and ordered the dismissal of Flores’s appeal.
The right to appeal is statutory and not a natural right or an essential component of due process. The governing law is Section 178 of the Revised Election Code, which explicitly enumerates the offices for which an appeal lies from a Court of First Instance decision: “provincial governors, members of the provincial board, city councilors, and mayors.” The office of city vice-mayor is conspicuously absent from this list. Applying the principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius, the legislature’s deliberate omission of vice-mayor indicates no appeal was provided for that office.
The Court rejected the respondent’s arguments. First, it held that the legislative gap could not be filled by judicial construction but required legislative action. Second, it ruled that a city vice-mayor cannot be subsumed under the term “city councilors” in Section 178, as the vice-mayor possesses distinct functions and prerogatives beyond those of a councilor. While a direct appeal on pure questions of law to the Supreme Court might be possible in some contexts, Flores’s own notice of appeal admitted the issues were mixed questions of law and fact, foreclosing that avenue. Finally, the Court found certiorari appropriate as the jurisdictional issue had been squarely presented to and passed upon by the Court of Appeals, and its assumption of appellate power where none existed was a grave jurisdictional error.