RELATIVES of the victims of Payatas dump site landslide had lost their bid to compel the Quezon City government to pay a total of P188.1 million in damages for the death of their loved ones.
While the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City Branch 97 agreed that the Quezon City government was liable for the loss of lives and properties due to the collapse of the dump site in 2000, it only awarded temperate, moral and exemplary or corrective damages amounting to P110,000 each to the 57 plaintiffs, or a total of P6.27 million.
The trial court also awarded P100,000 in attorney’s fees for the plaintiffs.
It added that the court cannot award actual damages to the plaintiffs due to their failure to submit proof to warrant the grant of the plea.
“Although the plaintiffs enumerated their respective real and personal properties buried by the thrash slide, none of them were able to produce documentary evidence that indeed such properties existed prior to and at the time of the tragedy. Furthermore, no plaintiff testified as to the amount they incurred for the wake and burial of the deceased victims,” the court ruled.
“Bare allegations, unsupported by proof of the victims’ earning capacity cannot merit the award of the same. For loss of income due to death, there must be unbiased proof of the deceased’s average income,” it added.
The landslide happened on July 10, 2000, during the term of then-Quezon City Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr. The incident buried 232 people alive.
“The mountain-like thrash in itself is a testament of the city government’s gross negligence in the management and operation of the dump site. Had they exercised due care expected of them, they could not have allowed the garbage to rise to such unprecedented height as to resemble several Meralco posts arranged on top of each other, or several storeys high of a building,” the decision issued by Branch 97 Acting Presiding Judge Marilou Runes-Tamang read.
“Consequently, the defendant City Government of Quezon City’s omission and negligence of not maintaining an adequate and suitable facility for solid waste disposal caused damage to both life and property of the persons living in the area,” Tamang added.
The plaintiffs are originally seeking P500,000 actual and compensatory damages for each death of a next of kin; P500,000 moral damages per each death of a next of kin; exemplary damages in the amount of P2 million; and attorney’s fee equivalent to 10 percent of total damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs.
The court held that the city government can not claim that the plaintiffs should be blamed for the misfortune they have encountered for their refusal to be relocated to safer places.
It said that the negligence of the city government in failing to maintain an adequate and suitable facility for solid waste disposal was the “proximate cause of the loss of lives and properties.”
The trial court noted that the plaintiffs were relocated to Payatas, from other points in Quezon City, by order of then Mayor Brigido Simon Jr. and were issued a certificate of program award.
“As indigents, the plaintiffs and the deceased victims relied on this piece of paper as their hold to the small portion of land, on which they built their houses…. Moreover, the plaintiffs’ stay in Payatas was tolerated by the city government for more than a decade from the time they were supposedly relocated.…,” it pointed out.
“If indeed the plaintiffs were informal settlers that had no right to stay in the subject land, they should have been demolished and/or relocated by the city government to a much safer place. Instead, their houses remained on the ground by toleration which can be construed as consent on the part of the city government for their continued stay thereat,” it added.