Zulueta v CA, G.R. No. 107383 [Case Digest]

 

Zulueta v CA,

G.R. No. 107383

Facts:

            Petitioner Cecilia Zulueta is the wife of private respondent Alfredo Martin. Petitioner entered the clinic of her husband, and in the presence of her mother, a driver and private respondent's secretary, forcibly opened the drawers and cabinet in her husband's clinic and took 157 documents consisting of private correspondence between Dr. Martin and his alleged paramours.

            Dr. Martin brought this action below for recovery of the documents and papers and for damages against petitioner. RTC rendered judgment in favor of Dr. Martin. CA affirmed the decision of RTC. Said documents were used against Dr. Martin in the administrative case.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the documents admissible as evidence in administrative case.

Held:

            NO. The constitutional injunction declaring "the privacy of communication and correspondence [to be] inviolable" is no less applicable simply because it is the wife (who thinks herself aggrieved by her husband's infidelity) who is the party against whom the constitutional provision is to be enforced.

The intimacies between husband and wife do not justify any one of them in breaking the drawers and cabinets of the other and in ransacking them for any telltale evidence of marital infidelity. A person, by contracting marriage, does not shed his/her integrity or his right to privacy as an individual and the constitutional protection is ever available to him or to her.