Geluz vs. CA

ANTONIO GELUZ, petitioner,
vs.
THE HON. COURT OF APPEALS and OSCAR LAZO, respondents.

G.R. No. L-­16439
July 20, 1961

FACTS:

In 1950, before Nita Villanueva and Oscar Lazo were married, Villanueva became pregnant. To conceal her pregnancy from her parents and upon her aunt’s advice, she had an abortion by Antonio Geluz, a physician. After Villanueva and Lazo got married, she became pregnant for the second time. As she was an employee of the Commission on Elections and found it inconvenient, she had her second abortion by Geluz in October 1953. In less than two years, she again became pregnant. On 21 February 1955, Villanueva went to the clinic of Geluz in Manila accompanied by her sister and her niece. Unknown to Lazo and without his consent, his wife had an abortion for the third time, an abortion of a two-­month old fetus. Villanueva paid Geluz fifty pesos. At that time, Lazo was in Cagayan campaigning for his election to the provincial board.

On the basis of the last abortion, Lazo instituted an action in the Court of First Instance of Manila against Geluz. The trial court ordered Geluz to pay Lazo damages, attorney’s fees and costs of the suit. On appeal, the Court of Appeals sustained the decision of the trial court. Hence, Geluz filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court.

ISSUE:

Did the unborn child acquire civil personality?

HELD:

No, the unborn child did not acquire civil personality.

Article 40 of the Civil Code expressly limits the provisional personality by imposing the condition that the child should be subsequently born alive: “provided it be born later with the condition specified in the following article.” In this case, there is no dispute that the child was dead when separated from its mother’s womb.

Since an action for pecuniary damages on account of personal injury of death pertains primarily to the one injured, it is easy to see that if no action for such damages could be instituted on behalf of the unborn child on account of the injuries it received, no such right of action could derivatively accrue to its parents or heirs. In fact, even if a cause of action did accrue on behalf of the unborn child, the same was extinguished by its pre-­natal death since no transmission to anyone can take place from on that lacked juridical personality (or juridical capacity as distinguished from capacity to act).

This is not to say that the parents are not entitled to collect any damages at all. But such damages must be those inflicted directly upon them, as distinguished from the injury or violation of the rights of the deceased child, his right to life and physical integrity. Because the parents cannot expect either help, support or services from an unborn child, they would normally be limited to moral damages for the illegal arrest of the normal development of the spes hominis that was the foetus, i.e., on account of distress and anguish attendant to its loss, and the disappointment of their parental expectations as well as to exemplary damages, if the circumstances should warrant them.

In this case, however, both the trial court and the Court of Appeals have not found any basis for an award of moral damages, evidently because the appellee’s indifference to the previous abortions of his wife, also caused by the appellant herein, clearly indicates that he was unconcerned with the frustration of his parental hopes and affections. Even after learning of the third abortion, the appellee does not seem to have taken interest in the administrative and criminal cases against the appellant. His only concern appears to have been directed at obtaining from the doctor a large money payment.

Hence, the decision appealed from is reversed, and the complaint ordered dismissed.