Suarez v. Hon. Damaso S. Tengco, et. Al

G.R No. L-17113, May 23, 1961

Topic: Self-Incrimination

FACTS:

Juanito Suarez petitions for a writ of prohibition against the Honorable Damaso S. Tengco, as Judge of the Court of First Instance of Batangas, to restrain him from compelling petitioner to testify in Civil Case No. 1058 of said court.

It would appear that a jeep in which plaintiffs in the civil case (the other respondents herein De la Roca and Umali) were riding, had collided with an automobile driven by petitioner, and as a sequel thereto, Criminal Case No. 1458 was filed against petitioner in the Court of First Instance of Batangas. On August 28, 1959, Civil Case No. 1058 was also filed against petitioner to collect damages allegedly suffered by the plaintiffs as a result of his reckless negligence in the same incident involved in the criminal case. On the first day of trial of the civil case, and while Criminal Case No. 1458 was also pending in the same court, plaintiffs therein required defendant Suarez (petitioner herein) to take the stand and testify as their first witness.

ISSUE:         Whether or not Juanito’s right against self-incrimination is violated.

RULING:

Except in criminal cases, there is no rule prohibiting a party litigant from utilizing his adversary as witness. As a mater of fact, section 83 of Rule 123, Rules of Court expressly authorizes a party to call an adverse party to the witness stand and interrogate him. This rule is, of course, subject to the constitutional injunction not to compel any person to testify against himself. But it is established that the privilege against self-incrimination must be invoked at the proper time, and the proper time to invoke it is when a question calling for a criminating answer is propounded. This has to be so, because before a question is asked there would be no way of telling whether the information to be elicited from the witness is self- incriminating or not. As stated in Jones on Evidence (Vol. 6, pp. 4926-4927), a person who has been summoned to testify 'cannot decline to appear, nor can he decline to be sworn as a witness' and 'no claim of privilege can be made until a question calling for a criminating answer is asked; at that time, and, generally speaking, at that time only, the claim of privilege may properly be interposed.'(Gonzales v. Sec. of Labor, L-6409, February 5, 1954, cit. in Navarro, Criminal Procedure, p. 302).

Here, petitioner invoked the privilege even prior to any question, and simply declined to take the witness stand. Petitioner was being directed to take the stand, not in a criminal case where he is an accused, but in an independent civil action which, although arising from the same facts involved in a criminal case pending before the same court, is still regarded by law as an "entirely separate and distinct" action, governed by a corresponding different set of rules (Civil Code of the Phil., Art. 2177).