Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel
Operators vs. City of Manila, G.R. No. 24693, July 31, 1967
Title
of the Case: Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators vs. City of Manila
Nature:
Review on certiorari
Keywords:
Due Process, Police Power
Summary: RTC - ruled in favour of
Petitioners and held that Ordinance 4760 is unconstitutional, and, therefore,
null and void. SC - affirmed RTC decision.
FERNANDO, J.
Facts:
Ermita-Malate
Hotel and Motel Operators Association, and one of its members Hotel del Mar
Inc. petitioned for the prohibition of Ordinance 4670 on June 14, 1963 to be
applicable in the city of Manila.
They
claimed that the ordinance was beyond the powers of the Manila City Board to
regulate due to the fact that hotels were not part of its regulatory powers.
They also asserted that Section 1 of the challenged ordinance was
unconstitutional and void for being unreasonable and violative of due process
insofar because it would impose P6,000.00 license fee per annum for first class
motels and P4,500.00 for second class motels; there was also the requirement that the guests would fill up
a form specifying their personal information.
There
was also a provision that the premises and facilities of such hotels, motels
and lodging houses would be open for inspection from city authorites. They
claimed this to be violative of due process for being vague.
The
law also classified motels into two classes and required the maintenance of
certain minimum facilities in first class motels such as a telephone in each
room, a dining room or, restaurant and laundry. The petitioners also invoked
the lack of due process on this for being arbitrary.
It
was also unlawful for the owner to lease any room or portion thereof more than
twice every 24 hours.
There
was also a prohibition for persons below 18 in the hotel.
The
challenged ordinance also caused the automatic cancellation of the license of
the hotels that violated the ordinance.
The
lower court declared the ordinance unconstitutional.
Hence,
this appeal by the city of Manila.
Issue: Whether Ordinance
No. 4760 of the City of Manila is violative of the due process clause?
Ratio: No. "The presumption is towards the
validity of a law.” However, the Judiciary should not lightly set aside
legislative action when there is not a clear invasion of personal or property
rights under the guise of police regulation.
O'Gorman
& Young v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co- Case was in the scope of police
power. As underlying questions of fact may condition the constitutionality of
legislation of this character, the resumption of constitutionality must prevail
in the absence of some factual foundation of record for overthrowing the
statute." No such factual foundation being laid in the present case, the
lower court deciding the matter on the pleadings and the stipulation of facts,
the presumption of validity must prevail and the judgment against the ordinance
set aside.”
There is no question but that the challenged ordinance was
precisely enacted to minimize certain practices hurtful to public morals,
particularly fornication and prostitution. Moreover, the increase in the
licensed fees was intended to discourage "establishments of the kind from
operating for purpose other than legal" and at the same time, to increase
"the income of the city government.”
Police power is the power to prescribe
regulations to promote the health, morals, peace, good order, safety and
general welfare of the people. In view of the requirements of due process,
equal protection and other applicable constitutional guaranties, however, the
power must not be unreasonable or violative of due process.
There
is no controlling and precise definition of due process. It has a standard to
which the governmental action should conform in order that deprivation of life,
liberty or property, in each appropriate case, be valid. What then is the
standard of due process which must exist both as a procedural and a substantive
requisite to free the challenged ordinance from legal infirmity? It is
responsiveness to the supremacy of reason, obedience to the dictates of
justice. Negatively put, arbitrariness is ruled out and unfairness avoided.
Due
process is not a narrow or "technical conception with fixed content
unrelated to time, place and circumstances," decisions based on such a
clause requiring a "close and perceptive inquiry into fundamental
principles of our society." Questions of due process are not to be treated
narrowly or pedantically in slavery to form or phrase.
Nothing
in the petition is sufficient to prove the ordinance’s nullity for an alleged
failure to meet the due process requirement.
Cu Unjieng case: Licenses for non-useful occupations are
also incidental to the police power and the right to exact a fee may be implied
from the power to license and regulate, but in fixing amount of the license
fees the municipal corporations are allowed a much wider discretion in this
class of cases than in the former, and aside from applying the well-known legal
principle that municipal ordinances must not be unreasonable, oppressive, or
tyrannical, courts have, as a general rule, declined to interfere with such
discretion. Eg. Sale of liquors.
Lutz v. Araneta- Taxation may be made to supplement the
state’s police power.
In
one case- “much discretion is given to municipal corporations in determining
the amount," here the license fee of the operator of a massage clinic,
even if it were viewed purely as a police power measure.
On
the impairment of freedom to contract by limiting duration of use to twice
every 24 hours- It was not violative of due process. 'Liberty' as understood in
democracies, is not license; it is 'liberty regulated by law.' Implied in the
term is restraint by law for the good of the individual and for the greater
good of the peace and order of society and the general well-being.
Laurel- The citizen should achieve the required balance of liberty and
authority in his mind through education and personal discipline, so that there
may be established the resultant equilibrium, which means peace and order and
happiness for all.
The
freedom to contract no longer "retains its virtuality as a living
principle, unlike in the sole case of People v Pomar. The policy of laissez
faire has to some extent given way to the assumption by the government of the
right of intervention even in contractual relations affected with public
interest.
What
may be stressed sufficiently is that if the liberty involved were freedom of
the mind or the person, the standard for the validity of governmental acts is
much more rigorous and exacting, but where the liberty curtailed affects at the
most rights of property, the permissible scope of regulatory measure is wider.
On
the law being vague on the issue of personal information, the maintenance of
establishments, and the “full rate of payment”- Holmes- “We agree to all the
generalities about not supplying criminal laws with what they omit but there is
no canon against using common sense in construing laws as saying what they
obviously mean."
Ruling: Wherefore, the
judgment of the lower court is reversed and the injunction issued lifted
forthwith. With costs.
Note: Ordinance
is a valid exercise of police power to minimize certain practices hurtful to
public morals. There is no violation of constitutional due process for being
reasonable and the ordinance is enjoys the presumption of constitutionality
absent any irregularity on its face. Taxation may be made to implement a police
power and the amount, object, and instance of taxation is dependent upon the
local legislative body. Judgment of lower court reversed and injunction lifted.
