G.R. No. L-4440; August 29, 1952
BUNGE CORPORATION and UNIVERSAL COMMERCIAL AGENCIES, plaintiffs-appellees, vs. ELENA CAMENFORTE and COMPANY, doing business or trading under the name and style of Visayan Products Company, ET AL., defendants-appellants.

FACTS

On October 22, 1947, a contract was entered into in Cebu City between Visayan Products Company (represented by Vicente Kho) and Bunge Corporation (represented by Universal Commercial Agencies). The contract stipulated that Visayan Products Company would sell to Bunge Corporation 500 long tons of merchantable Philippine copra at a specified price, to be shipped to San Francisco, California, during November or December 1947. The vendor failed to ship and deliver the copra within the agreed period. Bunge Corporation, having sold the same quantity of copra to El Dorado Oil Works in anticipation of the delivery, claimed damages due to the vendor’s breach. The defendants, except Vicente Kho, initially denied that Visayan Products Company entered into such a contract, alleging Vicente Kho lacked authority. Vicente Kho admitted the transaction but claimed it was with a different Visayan Products Company based in Tacloban, of which he was manager, and that his failure to deliver was due to force majeure—a storm that destroyed the copra stored in San Ramon, Samar, before shipment. The trial court rendered a decision ordering defendant Elena Camenforte & Company to pay damages to the plaintiffs. The defendants appealed.

ISSUE

Whether the defendants are exempt from liability for damages for their failure to deliver the copra on the ground of force majeure.

RULING

No. The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision, holding the defendants liable for damages. The contract involved the sale of 500 long tons of Philippine copra, which is a generic object, not a specific or particular lot. The obligation to deliver a generic thing is not extinguished by the loss or destruction of any specific item belonging to that genus, as “genus nunquan perit” (a genus never perishes). The copra stored in Samar and allegedly destroyed by the storm was merely a specific lot chosen by the defendants in preparation for fulfilling their generic obligation; its loss did not discharge their contractual duty to deliver the copra, as the obligation persisted as long as copra was available in the market. The defense of force majeure was therefore unavailing. The Court also noted that while it considered the lower court’s disregard of the transaction with El Dorado Oil Works as erroneous, this error did not warrant a modification of the judgment since the plaintiffs-appellees did not appeal the decision.