SPOUSES BENJAMIN
C. MAMARIL AND SONIA P. MAMARIL VS. THE BOY SCOUT OF THE PHILIPPINES, AIB
SECURITY AGENCY, INC., CESARIO PEÑA,* AND VICENTE GADDI, G.R.
No. 179382, January 14, 2013
“x x x.
Anent Sps. Mamaril’s
claim that the exculpatory clause: “Management shall not be responsible for
loss of vehicle or any of its accessories or article left therein” 17 contained in
the BSP issued parking ticket was void for being a contract of adhesion and
against public policy, suffice it to state that contracts of adhesion are
not void per se. It is binding as any other ordinary contract and a party
who enters into it is free to reject the stipulations in its entirety. If the
terms thereof are accepted without objection, as in this case, where
plaintiffs-appellants have been leasing BSP’s parking space for more or less 20
years,18 then the contract serves as the law between them.19 Besides, the parking fee of P300.00 per month or P10.00 a
day for each unit is too minimal an amount to even create an inference that BSP
undertook to be an insurer of the safety of plaintiffs-appellants’ vehicles.
On the matter of
damages, the Court noted that while Sonia P. Mamaril testified that the subject
vehicle had accessories worth around P50,000.00, she failed to present any
receipt to substantiate her claim.20 Neither did she submit any record or
journal that would have established the purported P275.0021 daily
earnings of their jeepney. It is axiomatic that actual damages must be proved
with reasonable degree of certainty and a party is entitled only to such
compensation for the pecuniary loss that was duly proven. Thus, absent any
competent proof of the amount of damages sustained, the CA properly deleted the
said awards.22
Similarly, the
awards of moral and exemplary damages and attorney’s fees were properly
disallowed by the CA for lack of factual and legal bases. While the RTC granted
these awards in the dispositive portion of its November 28, 2001 decision, it
failed to provide sufficient justification therefor.23
X x x.”
