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84484

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Republic of the Philippines

FIRST DIVISION

G.R. No. 84484 November 15, 1989

INSULAR LIFE ASSURANCE CO., LTD., petitioner,

Tirol & Tirol for petitioner.

Enojas, Defensor & Teodosio Cabado Law Offices for private respondent.

NARVASA, J.:

On July 2, 1968, Insular Life Assurance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter simply called the Company) and Melecio T. Basiao
entered into a contract 1 by which:

1. Basiao was "authorized to solicit within the Philippines applications for insurance policies and
annuities in accordance with the existing rules and regulations" of the Company;

2. he would receive "compensation, in the form of commissions ... as provided in the Schedule of
Commissions" of the contract to "constitute a part of the consideration of ... (said) agreement;" and

3. the "rules in ... (the Company's) Rate Book and its Agent's Manual, as well as all its circulars ... and
those which may from time to time be promulgated by it, ..." were made part of said contract.

The contract also contained, among others, provisions governing the relations of the parties, the duties of the Agent,
the acts prohibited to him, and the modes of termination of the agreement, viz.:

RELATION WITH THE COMPANY. The Agent shall be free to exercise his own judgment as to time,
place and means of soliciting insurance. Nothing herein contained shall therefore be construed to
create the relationship of employee and employer between the Agent and the Company. However, the
Agent shall observe and conform to all rules and regulations which the Company may from time to time
prescribe.

ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL PRACTICES. The Agent is prohibited from giving, directly or indirectly,
rebates in any form, or from making any misrepresentation or over-selling, and, in general, from doing
or committing acts prohibited in the Agent's Manual and in circulars of the Office of the Insurance
Commissioner.

TERMINATION. The Company may terminate the contract at will, without any previous notice to the
Agent, for or on account of ... (explicitly specified causes). ...

Either party may terminate this contract by giving to the other notice in writing to that effect. It shall
become ipso facto cancelled if the Insurance Commissioner should revoke a Certificate of Authority
previously issued or should the Agent fail to renew his existing Certificate of Authority upon its
expiration. The Agent shall not have any right to any commission on renewal of premiums that may be
paid after the termination of this agreement for any cause whatsoever, except when the termination is
due to disability or death in line of service. As to commission corresponding to any balance of the first
year's premiums remaining unpaid at the termination of this agreement, the Agent shall be entitled to it
if the balance of the first year premium is paid, less actual cost of collection, unless the termination is
due to a violation of this contract, involving criminal liability or breach of trust.

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ASSIGNMENT. No Assignment of the Agency herein created or of commissions or other

Some four years later, in April 1972, the parties entered into another contract — an Agency Manager's Contract —
and to implement his end of it Basiao organized an agency or office to which he gave the name M. Basiao and
Associates, while concurrently fulfilling his commitments under the first contract with the Company. 2

In May, 1979, the Company terminated the Agency Manager's Contract. After vainly seeking a reconsideration,
Basiao sued the Company in a civil action and this, he was later to claim, prompted the latter to terminate also his
engagement under the first contract and to stop payment of his commissions starting April 1, 1980. 3

Basiao thereafter filed with the then Ministry of Labor a complaint 4 against the Company and its president. Without
contesting the termination of the first contract, the complaint sought to recover commissions allegedly unpaid
thereunder, plus attorney's fees. The respondents disputed the Ministry's jurisdiction over Basiao's claim, asserting
that he was not the Company's employee, but an independent contractor and that the Company had no obligation to
him for unpaid commissions under the terms and conditions of his contract. 5

The Labor Arbiter to whom the case was assigned found for Basiao. He ruled that the underwriting agreement had
established an employer-employee relationship between him and the Company, and this conferred jurisdiction on
the Ministry of Labor to adjudicate his claim. Said official's decision directed payment of his unpaid commissions "...
equivalent to the balance of the first year's premium remaining unpaid, at the time of his termination, of all the
insurance policies solicited by ... (him) in favor of the respondent company ..." plus 10% attorney's fees. 6
7
This decision was, on appeal by the Company, affirmed by the National Labor Relations Commission. Hence, the
present petition for certiorari and prohibition.

The chief issue here is one of jurisdiction: whether, as Basiao asserts, he had become the Company's employee by
virtue of the contract invoked by him, thereby placing his claim for unpaid commissions within the original and
exclusive jurisdiction of the Labor Arbiter under the provisions of Section 217 of the Labor Code, 8 or, contrarily, as
the Company would have it, that under said contract Basiao's status was that of an independent contractor whose
claim was thus cognizable, not by the Labor Arbiter in a labor case, but by the regular courts in an ordinary civil
action.

The Company's thesis, that no employer-employee relation in the legal and generally accepted sense existed
between it and Basiao, is drawn from the terms of the contract they had entered into, which, either expressly or by
necessary implication, made Basiao the master of his own time and selling methods, left to his judgment the time,
place and means of soliciting insurance, set no accomplishment quotas and compensated him on the basis of
results obtained. He was not bound to observe any schedule of working hours or report to any regular station; he
could seek and work on his prospects anywhere and at anytime he chose to, and was free to adopt the selling
methods he deemed most effective.

Without denying that the above were indeed the expressed implicit conditions of Basiao's contract with the
Company, the respondents contend that they do not constitute the decisive determinant of the nature of his
engagement, invoking precedents to the effect that the critical feature distinguishing the status of an employee from
that of an independent contractor is control, that is, whether or not the party who engages the services of another
has the power to control the latter's conduct in rendering such services. Pursuing the argument, the respondents
draw attention to the provisions of Basiao's contract obliging him to "... observe and conform to all rules and
regulations which the Company may from time to time prescribe ...," as well as to the fact that the Company
prescribed the qualifications of applicants for insurance, processed their applications and determined the amounts of
insurance cover to be issued as indicative of the control, which made Basiao, in legal contemplation, an employee of
the Company. 9

It is true that the "control test" expressed in the following pronouncement of the Court in the 1956 case of Viana vs.
Alejo Al-Lagadan10

... In determining the existence of employer-employee relationship, the following elements are generally
considered, namely: (1) the selection and engagement of the employee; (2) the payment of wages; (3)
the power of dismissal; and (4) the power to control the employees' conduct — although the latter is the
most important element (35 Am. Jur. 445). ...

has been followed and applied in later cases, some fairly recent. 11 Indeed, it is without question a valid test of the
character of a contract or agreement to render service. It should, however, be obvious that not every form of control
that the hiring party reserves to himself over the conduct of the party hired in relation to the services rendered may
be accorded the effect of establishing an employer-employee relationship between them in the legal or technical
sense of the term. A line must be drawn somewhere, if the recognized distinction between an employee and an
individual contractor is not to vanish altogether. Realistically, it would be a rare contract of service that gives

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untrammelled freedom to the party hired and eschews any intervention whatsoever in his performance of the
engagement.

Logically, the line should be drawn between rules that merely serve as guidelines towards the achievement of the
mutually desired result without dictating the means or methods to be employed in attaining it, and those that control
or fix the methodology and bind or restrict the party hired to the use of such means. The first, which aim only to
promote the result, create no employer-employee relationship unlike the second, which address both the result and
the means used to achieve it. The distinction acquires particular relevance in the case of an enterprise affected with
public interest, as is the business of insurance, and is on that account subject to regulation by the State with
respect, not only to the relations between insurer and insured but also to the internal affairs of the insurance
company. 12 Rules and regulations governing the conduct of the business are provided for in the Insurance Code
and enforced by the Insurance Commissioner. It is, therefore, usual and expected for an insurance company to
promulgate a set of rules to guide its commission agents in selling its policies that they may not run afoul of the law
and what it requires or prohibits. Of such a character are the rules which prescribe the qualifications of persons who
may be insured, subject insurance applications to processing and approval by the Company, and also reserve to the
Company the determination of the premiums to be paid and the schedules of payment. None of these really invades
the agent's contractual prerogative to adopt his own selling methods or to sell insurance at his own time and
convenience, hence cannot justifiably be said to establish an employer-employee relationship between him and the
company.

There is no dearth of authority holding persons similarly placed as respondent Basiao to be independent
contractors, instead of employees of the parties for whom they worked. In Mafinco Trading Corporation vs. Ople, 13
the Court ruled that a person engaged to sell soft drinks for another, using a truck supplied by the latter, but with the
right to employ his own workers, sell according to his own methods subject only to prearranged routes, observing no
working hours fixed by the other party and obliged to secure his own licenses and defray his own selling expenses,
all in consideration of a peddler's discount given by the other party for at least 250 cases of soft drinks sold daily,
was not an employee but an independent contractor.

In Investment Planning Corporation of the Philippines us. Social Security System 14 a case almost on all fours with
the present one, this Court held that there was no employer-employee relationship between a commission agent
and an investment company, but that the former was an independent contractor where said agent and others
similarly placed were: (a) paid compensation in the form of commissions based on percentages of their sales, any
balance of commissions earned being payable to their legal representatives in the event of death or registration; (b)
required to put up performance bonds; (c) subject to a set of rules and regulations governing the performance of
their duties under the agreement with the company and termination of their services for certain causes; (d) not
required to report for work at any time, nor to devote their time exclusively to working for the company nor to submit
a record of their activities, and who, finally, shouldered their own selling and transportation expenses.

More recently, in Sara vs. NLRC, 15 it was held that one who had been engaged by a rice miller to buy and sell rice
and palay without compensation except a certain percentage of what he was able to buy or sell, did work at his own
pleasure without any supervision or control on the part of his principal and relied on his own resources in the
performance of his work, was a plain commission agent, an independent contractor and not an employee.

The respondents limit themselves to pointing out that Basiao's contract with the Company bound him to observe and
conform to such rules and regulations as the latter might from time to time prescribe. No showing has been made
that any such rules or regulations were in fact promulgated, much less that any rules existed or were issued which
effectively controlled or restricted his choice of methods — or the methods themselves — of selling insurance.
Absent such showing, the Court will not speculate that any exceptions or qualifications were imposed on the
express provision of the contract leaving Basiao "... free to exercise his own judgment as to the time, place and
means of soliciting insurance."

The Labor Arbiter's decision makes reference to Basiao's claim of having been connected with the Company for
twenty-five years. Whatever this is meant to imply, the obvious reply would be that what is germane here is Basiao's
status under the contract of July 2, 1968, not the length of his relationship with the Company.

The Court, therefore, rules that under the contract invoked by him, Basiao was not an employee of the petitioner, but
a commission agent, an independent contractor whose claim for unpaid commissions should have been litigated in
an ordinary civil action. The Labor Arbiter erred in taking cognizance of, and adjudicating, said claim, being without
jurisdiction to do so, as did the respondent NLRC in affirming the Arbiter's decision. This conclusion renders it
unnecessary and premature to consider Basiao's claim for commissions on its merits.

WHEREFORE, the appealed Resolution of the National Labor Relations Commission is set aside, and that
complaint of private respondent Melecio T. Basiao in RAB Case No. VI-0010-83 is dismissed. No pronouncement as
to costs.

SO ORDERED.

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