Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators v. City of Manila G.R. No. L-24693 [Case Digest]

 

Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators v. City of Manila

G.R. No. L-24693

Facts:

            The City of Manila enacted an Ordinance No. 4760 to require the owner, manager, keeper or duly authorized representative of a hotel, motel, or lodging house to refrain from entertaining or accepting any guest or customer or letting any room or other quarter to any person or persons without his filling up the prescribed form in a lobby open to public view at all times and in his presence.

            The Ermita-Malate Hotel Operators question the constitutionality of the said ordinance on the ground that it is violative of due process clause of the Bill of Rights.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not Ordinance No. 4760 of the City of Manila is violative of the due process clause.

 

Held:

            No.

 

Ratio:

            This particular manifestation of a police power measure being specifically aimed to safeguard public morals is immune from such imputation of nullity resting purely on conjecture and unsupported by anything of substance. To hold otherwise would be to unduly restrict and narrow the scope of police power which has been properly characterized as the most essential, insistent and the least limitable of powers, extending as it does "to all the great public needs."

 

Buck v. Bell, 274 U. S. 200 [Case Digest]

 

Buck v. Bell,

274 U. S. 200

 

Facts:

            Carrie Buck the plaintiff [in error] was sentence to a judgment for the operation of salpingectomy by the CA of the State of Virginia which affirmed a judgment ordering the Superintendent of the State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded.

This judgment is pursuant to the Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found to be afflicted with hereditary form of insanity or imbecility.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the Virginia statute indicated above contravene the equal protection clause.

 

Held:

            No.

 

Ratio:

            We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

 

Assn. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform, 175 SCRA 343 [Case Digest]

 

Assn. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform,

175 SCRA 343

 

Facts:

            The subjects of this petition are a 9-hectare riceland worked by four tenants and owned by petitioner Nicolas Manaay and his wife and a 5-hectare riceland worked by four tenants and owned by petitioner Augustin Hermano, Jr. The tenants were declared full owners of these lands by E.O. No. 228 as qualified farmers under P.D. No. 27. The petitioners are questioning P.D. No. 27 and E.O. Nos. 228 and 229 on grounds inter alia of separation of powers, due process, equal protection and the constitutional limitation that no private property shall be taken for public use without just compensation.

            Petitioners invoke the cases of EPZA v. Dulay and Manotok v. National Food Authority. Moreover; that “the just compensation contemplated by the Bill of Rights is payable in money or in cash and not in the form of bonds or other things of value.”

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the payment of just compensation is payable only in cash and not in the form of bonds.

 

Held:

            No. This is a revolutionary kind of expropriation.

 

Ratio:

            It cannot be denied from these cases that the traditional medium for the payment of just compensation is money and no other. However, we do not deal here with the traditional exercise of the power of eminent domain. This is not an ordinary expropriation where only a specific property of relatively limited area is sought to be taken by the State from its owner for a specific and perhaps local purpose.

The expropriation before us affects all private agricultural lands whenever found and of whatever kind as long as they are in excess of the maximum retention limits allowed their owners. This kind of expropriation is intended for the benefit not only of a particular community or of a small segment of the population but of the entire Filipino nation, from all levels of our society, from the impoverished farmer to the land-glutted owner.