NATIONAL POWER CORPORATION, Petitioner, vs. HON. RAMON G. CODILLA, JR., Presiding Judge, RTC of Cebu, Br. 19, BANGPAI SHIPPING COMPANY, and WALLEM SHIPPING, INCORPORATED, Respondents.

G.R. No. 170491             April 4, 2007

NATIONAL POWER CORPORATION, Petitioner, 

vs.

HON. RAMON G. CODILLA, JR., Presiding Judge, RTC of Cebu, Br. 19, BANGPAI SHIPPING COMPANY, and WALLEM SHIPPING, INCORPORATED, Respondents.

FACTS: On April 20, 1996, M/V Dibena Win, a vessel of foreign registry owned and operated by private respondent Bangpai Shipping, Co., allegedly bumped and damaged petitioner’s Power Badge 209 which was then moored at the Cebu International Port. Subsequently, petitioner filed a complaint for damages against the private respondent Bangspai Shipping Co., for the alleged damages caused on their power barges.

​Petitioner adduced evidence and made a formal offer thereof. The public respondent judge denied the admission and excluded from the records some of the documents submitted by the petitioner as evidence supporting their complaint on the ground that despite the opportunity given to them, they failed to present the originals of the Xerox or photocopies of the documents it offered. NAPOCOR justified the admission by saying that the “photocopies offered are equivalent to the original of the document” using the provisions of the Electronic Evidence. The defendant’s objected this claim saying that Xerox copies do not constitute the electronic evidence as defines in Section 1 of Rule 2 of the Rules of Electronic Evidence. They assailed further that the Xerox copies were not received, recorded, retrieved or produced electronically and required to be authenticated when offered as evidence.

Issue: Whether or not the photocopies offered by the petitioner as formal evidence before the trial court are the functional equivalent of their original based on the Rules on Electronic Evidence?

Held: The Supreme Court found the arguments of the petitioner untenable.

Electronic document refers to information or the representation of information, data, figures or other models of written expression, described or however represented, by which a right is established or an obligation extinguished, or by which a fact may be proved or affirmed which is received, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced electronically. The rules use the word "information" to define an electronic document received, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced electronically. This would suggest that an electronic document is relevant only in terms of the information contained therein, similar to any other document which is presented in evidence as proof of its contents. Petitioner’s argument that since the paper were produced through an electronic process, then it is deemed to be an electronic document is not tenable as what differentiates an electronic document from a paper based document is the manner by which the information is processed.

Further, the court is with the belief that the acceptance of the documents submitted by the petitioners will violate the Best Evidence Rule under the Rules of Court. The petitioner did not provide any reason as to why they cannot produce the originals of the photocopies. There is no attempt to justify the same using the exceptions under the Best Evidence Rule.

Hence, the Supreme Court denied NAPOCOR’s petition and upheld the decision of the lower court.