G.R. No. L-5750 April 20, 1953
Rodrigo Coloso, petitioner-appellant, vs. Board of Accountancy, respondent-appellee.

FACTS

Petitioner Rodrigo Coloso took the Certified Public Accountant examination in June 1941. He passed Practical Accounting (75%) and Commercial Law (75%) but failed Auditing (70%) and Theory of Accounts (50%). Soon after the outbreak of World War II, he evacuated to Negros Occidental and stayed there continuously until early November 1945. During his absence, the Board of Accountancy held examinations in December 1941, July and December 1942, June and December 1943, June 1944, December 1945, and June and December 1946. Notices for these examinations were published in Manila newspapers but did not reach the petitioner. In November 1945, he requested the Board to allow him to take the examination only in Auditing and Theory of Accounts, pursuant to a Board rule allowing a candidate who scored 75% or more in two or more subjects to be exempt from those subjects in a subsequent examination if applied for within one year. The Board denied his request because it was not made within the one-year period. Subsequently, the petitioner took the full examination in December 1946 under protest, passing Theory of Accounts (88.5%), Commercial Law (75%), and Auditing (76.5%), but failing Practical Accounting (48%), a subject he had previously passed. He then filed a petition to compel the Board to register and issue him a CPA certificate.

ISSUE

Whether the Board of Accountancy can be compelled by mandamus to grant the petitioner’s request to be exempt from re-examination in the subjects he previously passed, despite his application being made outside the one-year period prescribed by its rules.

RULING

No. The Court affirmed the dismissal of the petition. First, the privilege under Paragraph VII of the Board’s Rules and Regulations, which allows re-examination to be confined only to previously failed subjects, is expressly discretionary (“the Board at its option, may permit”). Mandamus does not lie to control purely administrative and discretionary functions. Second, the Board had no authority to grant such a special examination unless the application was made within the one-year period prescribed by its own rule, which was approved by the Secretary of Finance as required by Act No. 3105 . The petitioner’s application, made in November 1945 for an examination he took in 1941, was untimely. The case of another individual, Exequiel S. Reyes, who was granted a similar privilege by the Secretary of Finance after the war, was not controlling, as the Department Head possesses wider powers than the Board and the Board cannot make such exceptions without the Secretary’s authority. Furthermore, the petitioner had a plain and adequate remedy by appealing to the Secretary of Finance, which he did not pursue.