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GR No. 7593, March 27, 1913: Supreme Court of The Philippines
GR No. 7593, March 27, 1913: Supreme Court of The Philippines
GR No. 7593
DECISION
ARELLANO, CJ:
The Court of First Instance of Iloilo sentenced the defendant to two years of
correctional imprisonment, to pay Juana Montilla 2,498 Philippine pesos or
in case of insolvency to suffer subsidiary prison at the rate of P2.50 per day,
without being able to exceed the third part of the main penalty and payment
of costs. The defendant appealed.
"The deposit is constituted from the moment one receives the agena thing
with the obligation to keep it and to restore it." (Cod. Civ. 1758). The accused
received 2498 pesos, it is a proven fact. The processed book a docum, in
which he declares that they remain in his possession; He could not have said
that they were in his possession if he had not received them. And they were
in his power surely no other way than to keep it, since they remain with no
other object. They remained in the possession of the accused at the disposal
of Mr. Eugenio Ceraguth; but on August 23 of the same, Veraguth did not
require him by means of a notarial act for the restitution of the amount, and
he did not return it to date.
After laying down the true facts: 1st having preceded a sales
commission; 2nd if this commission has been settled with a balance in favor
of the principal Juana Montilla of 2498 pesos; and 3rd, if this balance had
remained in the possession of the defendant, issuing a document payable
upon presentation, it has inferred two conclusions, both wrong: one, that the
document thus issued in the form of remains could have been endorsed or
negotiated like any other commercial document ; and another that the sum of
2498 pesos was held by the defendant as a loan.
Also erroneous is the assertion that, according to what remains, the amount of
money in the expressed remained in the possession of the accused as a
loan. By virtue of the loan, what the lender or borrower transmits to the
borrower or borrower is the use of the thing given on loan, while in the
deposit the use of the thing deposited is not transmitted, but only the
possession for its custody or custody.
For the depositary to be able to use or dispose of the things that were
deposited, the consent of the depositor is required, and then "the rights and
obligations of the depositor and depositor will cease, according to the law,
and the applicable rules and provisions will be observed. to the mercantile
loan, to the commission or to the contract that in substitution of the deposit
they had entered into. (Cod. of Com. 309).
Failure to be required for the restitution of the deposited amount that could
have been claimed on the same day or the day after the one on which the
remainder was signed cannot be turned against the depositor or have any
other meaning than the purpose of not pressuring it. Failure to immediately
claim or delay for some time the claim for the restitution of the thing
deposited, the restitution of which is due immediately, does not imply
concession of the use of the thing deposited that causes the deposit to be
denounced as a mutual loan.
The Commercial Code of 1829, prior to the one now in force, in its art. 408
provided that "the depositary of an amount of money cannot use it, and if he
does so, all damages that occur in the amount deposited will remain in his
charge and he will satisfy the depositor with the legal return of its
amount." In this case, the commentators of that Code said, for its purposes
the deposit becomes mutual, a just punishment imposed on the person who
thus abuses the sacred title of deposit and which is a means of preventing the
stimulus of earnings from making him enter in speculations that can be fatal
to the deponent, much more insured while the deposit exists, than when he
only has a personal action left to claim. According to article 548, case 5 of
the Criminal Code, those commentators continued saying, Those who, to the
detriment of another, appropriate or distract money, effects or any other
movable thing that they received in deposit, commission or administration or
by another title that produces an obligation to deliver or return it or deny
having received it, will incur the penalties of art. above (what a penalty such
an act as a crime of fraud). The corresponding article in the Criminal Code of
the Philippines is 535, case 5.o.
Wrong is also the intelligence that seems to want to be given to two decisions
of this Supreme Court as implying that for this Supreme Court what
constitutes fraud is not having the money deposited but denying having
received it. In the first of these cases there was no evidence that the defendant
had appropriated the grain deposited in his possession, "but on the contrary,
all probabilities are that after the departure of the defendant from the town of
Libmanan, on December 20 In 1898, two days after the uprising of the Nueva
Caceres Civil Guard, the revolutionary troops would have seized the palay,
"and, given this, it was said that it is not enough not to return the thing
deposited, but that proof of that the depositary has appropriated or diverted
the deposit for his own benefit or that of another. It was accused of refusal to
return and it was said that the Code did not penalize the refusal to return but
the refusal to have received. This in terms of crime of omission; that
regarding the crime of commission, it has not been said, in the decision, that
appropriating or distracting the thing deposited was not a crime of fraud. in
the second of these decisions, "the defendant did not keep any part of the
proceeds of the sale: this product, whatever it may have been, was delivered
by the defendant to the owner; and there being no proof of appropriation, the
commission agent could not be condemned as defendant of scam. that
appropriating or distracting the thing deposited was not the crime of fraud. in
the second of these decisions, "the defendant did not keep any part of the
proceeds of the sale: this product, whatever it may have been, was delivered
by the defendant to the owner; and there being no proof of appropriation, the
commission agent could not be condemned as defendant of scam. that
appropriating or distracting the thing deposited was not the crime of fraud. in
the second of these decisions, "the defendant did not keep any part of the sale
proceeds: this product, whatever it may have been, was delivered by the
defendant to the owner; and in the absence of proof of the appropriation, the
commission agent could not be condemned as defendant of scam.
Being in accordance with the law and arranged according to the merits of the
process, the sentence appealed.
Ten days after the sentence was handed down and ten days after it was
handed down, the case was returned.
So ordered.
Gomez, Johnson and Trent.
It could only become yours by way of the amount received on loan, if the
owner's will expressly stated, which would then be subject to the obligation
of not being able to claim it unless the expiration, or legal or conventional, of
the term in which it can be done effective a debt on the basis of a loan.
And without a doubt he commits the crime of fraud, the one that having in his
possession a certain and determined amount of money as a deposit at the
disposal of his owner, distracts it for his own use or appropriates it to the
detriment of this, well known, put that he has not yet reimbursed, thus acting
voluntarily and abusively for no other reason than to trust him.
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