Malaluan vs. COMELEC

G.R. # 120193

FACTS:

Petitioner Malaluan and Private Respondent Evangelista were both Mayoralty candidates.  Private Respondent was proclaimed by the Municipal Board of Canvassers as the duly elected Mayor against the Petitioner.

Petitioner filed an election protest with the RTC contesting 64 out of the total 181 precincts of the said Municipality.  The trial court declared Petitioner as the duly elected Municipal Mayor.

The Private Respondent appealed the Trial Court’s decision to the COMELEC, which declared Private Respondent to be the duly elected Municipal Mayor.

The COMELEC found Petitioner liable for attorney’s fee, actual expenses for Xerox copies, and unearned salary and other emoluments, en masse denominated as actual damages. 

Petitioner naturally contests that propriety and legality of this award upon private respondent on the ground that said damages have not been alleged and proved during trial.  COMELEC on the other hand, concluded in justifying that Private Respondent be awarded actual damages, and hold that since Petitioner was adjudged the winner in the elections only by the Trial Court, the Petitioner is deemed to have occupied the position in an illegal manner as a Usurper.

ISSUE:

W/N Petitioner acted as a Usurper?

HELD:

We hold that petitioner was not a usurper because, while a usurper is one who undertakes to act officially without any color of right, the petitioner exercised the duties of an elective office under color of election thereto. It matters not that it was the trial court and not the COMELEC that declared petitioner as the winner, because both, at different stages of the electoral process, have the power to so proclaim winners in electoral contests.

We deem petitioner, therefore, to be a “de facto officer who, in good faith, has had possession of the office and had discharged the duties pertaining thereto” and is thus “legally entitled to the emoluments of the office.”