This case has been cited 7 times or more.
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2016-02-10 |
BRION, J. |
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| The presence of government agents who may authorize immediate disconnections go into the essence of due process. Indeed, we cannot allow respondent to act virtually as prosecutor and judge in imposing the penalty of disconnection due to alleged meter tampering. That would not sit well in a democratic country. After all, Meralco is a monopoly that derives its power from the government. Clothing it with unilateral authority to disconnect would be equivalent to giving it a license to tyrannize its hapless customers.[11] (emphasis supplied) | |||||
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2016-02-10 |
BRION, J. |
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| In numerous cases,[27] this Court found that MERALCO failed to comply with the requirements under R.A. 7832 before a disconnection of a customer's electric service could be effected. In these cases, we aptly awarded exemplary damages against MERALCO to serve as a warning against repeating the same actions. | |||||
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2013-01-14 |
VILLARAMA, JR., J. |
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| Citing Quisumbing v. Manila Electric Company,[26] we reiterated the significance of this requirement in Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) v. Chua,[27] thus: The presence of government agents who may authorize immediate disconnections go into the essence of due process. Indeed, we cannot allow respondent to act virtually as prosecutor and judge in imposing the penalty of disconnection due to alleged meter tampering. That would not sit well in a democratic country. After all, Meralco is a monopoly that derives its power from the government. Clothing it with unilateral authority to disconnect would be equivalent to giving it a license to tyrannize its hapless customers. | |||||
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2009-09-04 |
QUISUMBING, J. |
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| Under the above provision, the prima facie presumption that will authorize immediate disconnection will arise only upon the satisfaction of certain requisites. One of these requisites is the personal witnessing and attestation by an officer of the law or by an authorized ERB representative when the discovery was made.[15] | |||||
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2009-02-12 |
CARPIO MORALES, J. |
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| Section 4. Prima Facie Evidence. - (a) The presence of any of the following circumstances shall constitute prima facie evidence of illegal use of electricity, as defined in this Act, by the person benefited thereby, and shall be the basis for: (1) the immediate disconnection by the electric utility to such person after due notice, (2) the holding of a preliminary investigation by the prosecutor and the subsequent filing in court of the pertinent information, and (3) the lifting of any temporary restraining order or injunction which may have been issued against a private electric utility or rural electric cooperative: (i) The presence of a bored hole on the glass cover of the electric meter, or at the back or any other part of said meter; (ii) The presence inside the electric meter of salt, sugar and other elements that could result in the inaccurate registration of the meter's internal parts to prevent its accurate registration of consumption of electricity; (iii) The existence of any wiring connection which affects the normal operation or registration of the electric meter; (iv) The presence of a tampered, broken, or fake seal on the meter, or mutilated, altered or tampered meter recording chart or graph, or computerized chart, graph, or log; (v) The presence in any part of the building or its premises which is subject to the control of the consumer or on the electric meter, of a current reversing transformer, jumper, shorting and/or shunting wire, and/or loop connection or any other similar device; (vi) The mutilation, alteration, reconnection, disconnection, bypassing or tampering of instruments, transformers, and accessories; (vii) The destruction of, or attempt to destroy, any integral accessory of the metering device box which encases an electric meter, or its metering accessories; and (viii) The acceptance of money and/or other valuable consideration by any officer of employee of the electric utility concerned or the making of such an offer to any such officer or employee for not reporting the presence of any of the circumstances enumerated in subparagraphs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), or (vii) hereof: Provided, however, That the discovery of any of the foregoing circumstances, in order to constitute prima facie evidence, must be personally witnessed and attested to by an officer of the law or a duly authorized representative of the Energy Regulatory Board (ERB). (b) The possession or custody of electric power transmission line/material by any person, natural or juridical, not engaged in the transformation, transmission or distribution of electric power, or in the manufacture of such electric power transmission line/material shall be prima facie evidence that such line/material is the fruit of the offense defined in Section 3 hereof and therefore such line/material may be confiscated from the person in possession, control or custody thereof. (Emphasis, italics and underscoring supplied) It is thus clear that for an allegation of tampering to be the basis for the disconnection of a customer's electric supply, the discovery of such must be personally witnessed and attested to by an officer of the law or an ERB representative. This requirement can not be dispensed with. Quisumbing v. Manila Electric Company[6] so instructs:The law says that before immediate disconnection may be allowed, the discovery of the illegal use of electricity must have been personally witnessed and attested to by an officer of the law or by an authorized ERB representative. In this case, the disconnection was effected immediately after the discovery of the alleged meter tampering, which was witnessed only by Meralco's employees. That the ERB representative was allegedly present when the meter was examined in the Meralco laboratory will not cure the defect. | |||||
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2004-06-15 |
TINGA, J. |
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| Thus, the EPIRA provides a framework for the restructuring of the industry, including the privatization of the assets of the National Power Corporation (NPC), the transition to a competitive structure, and the delineation of the roles of various government agencies and the private entities.[26] The law ordains the division of the industry into four (4) distinct sectors, namely: generation, transmission, distribution and supply.[27] Corollarily, the NPC generating plants have to privatized[28] and its transmission business spun off and privatized thereafter.[29] | |||||
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2003-12-08 |
AUSTRIA-MARTINEZ, J. |
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| It is settled that actual or compensatory damages are not presumed and should be proven before they are awarded. In Spouses Quisumbing vs. Meralco[26], we held that | |||||