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The Supreme Court’s 1988 ruling in Re: Request of the Heirs of the Passengers of the Doña Paz remains a defining precedent on class suits in the Philippines. It established that a class suit can only proceed if the plaintiffs share a single, indivisible cause of action—not merely a common set of facts or legal issues. This doctrine has significantly shaped how mass claims are litigated, particularly in disaster and consumer cases. But in the modern era, does this restrictive approach still make sense?
The Doña Paz doctrine reflects an earlier, more rigid view of class litigation. The Court relied on old U.S. legal principles, particularly U.S. Equity Rule 38 (1912), which required a class to have a “common or general interest” that was indivisible among members. This strict standard meant that only truly joint claims could be heard as a class suit. The Philippine Supreme Court, drawing from American case law, concluded that the victims of the Doña Paz tragedy had separate wrongful death claims and therefore could not file a class suit. Instead, each had to pursue individual cases, an impractical burden given the sheer number of victims.
However, the United States abandoned this rigid doctrine in 1966 when it revised Federal Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The new rule no longer required a single cause of action but instead emphasized common issues of law or fact. This paved the way for modern mass litigation, including product liability, consumer fraud, and environmental damage suits, where claimants suffer similar harms from the same event but may have differing claims.
This shift allowed class actions to serve their primary purpose: making justice accessible to large groups of affected individuals who might not be able to afford litigation on their own. U.S. courts now permit class certification if the common questions predominate, even if members have varying degrees of harm or legal theories.
While the U.S. modernized its class action rules, the Philippines remained stuck with the old U.S. Equity Rule 38 standards. Rule 3, Section 12 of the Philippine Rules of Court, which governs class suits, still uses language similar to the pre-1966 U.S. rule, requiring the subject matter to be “of common or general interest to many persons.” The Philippine Supreme Court, in Doña Paz, interpreted this rule narrowly, insisting that all members of a class must share one indivisible cause of action rather than allowing class suits based on shared legal or factual issues.
This has severely limited the availability of class suits in the Philippines. Unlike in the U.S., where mass torts, consumer fraud, and environmental damage cases are commonly certified as class actions, Philippine courts routinely reject class suits if the claimants’ legal bases differ—even if their injuries arise from the same wrongful act.
It is time for the Philippines to formally move beyond the Doña Paz doctrine and adopt a more practical, modern standard for class suits. This can be done in two ways:
If the goal of class suits is to provide access to justice for large groups of similarly harmed individuals, then the Philippines must move past the restrictive, outdated standards of U.S. Equity Rule 38 and adopt the principles behind modern Rule 23. Otherwise, mass claims will remain bogged down in procedural barriers, forcing victims to litigate separately—even when doing so is inefficient and unjust. The Supreme Court has already shown a willingness to evolve, and now is the time to take the next step: abandoning the Doña Paz rule and embracing a class suit doctrine fit for today’s world.
E-mail: attorney@geronimo.law
Web: www.geronimo.law
