WALLEM
PHILIPPINES SHIPPING, INC., v. S.R. FARMS, INC.,G.R. No.
161849. July 9, 2010
PERALTA, J.:
Civil Procedure
Issue:
Whether or not that the filing of the Amended Complaint
against petitioner should retroact to the date of the filing of the original
complaint.
Held:
The
settled rule is that the filing of an amended pleading does not retroact to the
date of the filing of the original; hence, the statute of limitation runs until
the submission of the amendment. It is true that, as an exception,
this Court has held that an amendment which merely supplements and amplifies
facts originally alleged in the complaint relates back to the date of
the commencement of the action and is not barred by the statute of limitations
which expired after the service of the original complaint.The exception, however, would not
apply to the party impleaded for the first time in the
amended complaint.
The rule on
the non-applicability of the curative and retroactive effect of an amended
complaint, insofar as newly impleaded defendants are concerned, has been
established as early as in the case of Aetna Insurance Co. v. Luzon
Stevedoring Corporation.[25] In the said case, the
defendant Barber Lines Far East Service was impleaded
for the first time in the amended complaint which was filed after the one-year
period of prescription. The order of the lower court dismissing the
amended complaint against the said defendant on ground of prescription was
affirmed by this Court.
In the
instant case, petitioner was only impleaded in the amended Complaint of June 7,
1993, or one (1) year, one (1) month and twenty-three (23) days from April 15,
1992, the date when the subject cargo was fully unloaded from the vessel.
Hence, reckoned from April 15, 1992, the one-year prescriptive period had
already lapsed.
Having ruled that the action against
petitioner had already prescribed, the Court no longer finds it necessary to
address the other issues raised in the present petition.
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