G.R. No. 130057 December 22, 1998 The Court ruled against the petitioner.

The action
HERMOGINA U. BULILAN vs. COMMISSION ON AUDIT of respondent Commission on the matter accords
with law and the evidence.

A. PARTIES The petition for review under Rule 45 availed of

by petitioner is not an appropriate remedy for the
Petitioner Hermogina U. Bulilan was the Cashier of problem at hand. Questions of fact, such as the
Visaya State College of Agriculture (VISCA) whose presence or absence of negligence on the part of
responsibility, as such Cashier, was to prepare petitioner in the handling or custody of subject
the payroll of employees of said State College. public funds, cannot be looked into and determined
under Rule 45. Succinct is the provision of
As the first quincina of the March payroll was
Article IX-A, Section 7 of the Constitution of the
due, petitioner withdrew from the Land Bank Branch
Republic of the Philippines that decisions, orders
in Tacloban City, the needed amount. Since she was
or rulings of the Commission on Audit may be
scheduled to leave for Baguio City on the day the
brought to the Supreme Court on certiorari by the
said payroll was to be released, she and her staff
aggrieved party within thirty (30) days from
rendered overtime service without pay, to make
receipt of a copy thereof. Rule 65 of the Revised
sure that payment of salaries of the employees
Rules of Court prescribes such a remedy.
would be on time.
After a careful examination of the records, it can
The methodology adopted by petitioner in preparing
be gleaned therefrom that the findings of fact by
the salaries of employees was by placing the net
the COA are duly supported by substantial
pay of every employee in individual pay envelopes.
evidence.
When the corresponding amounts were put in the pay
envelopes, the same became too bulky for the The Court is of the opinion, that the respondent
Mosler safe of petitioner to accommodate. Commission did not err in finding the petitioner
Confronted with the problem, she placed such pay guilty of negligence.
envelopes in a steel cabinet without a lock.
According to petitioner, when she left her office, Negligence is defined as "the omission to do something
she saw to it that its main door was double- which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations
which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs,
locked. would do, or the doing of something which a prudent man
and reasonable man could not do. Negligence is want of
On the night of March 11, 1990, a robbery took care required by the circumstances.
place at the Cashier's Office of VISCA resulting
Negligence is therefore a relative or comparative
to the loss of government funds amounting to concept. Its application depends upon the situation the
P566,468.91. parties are in, and the degree of care and vigilance
which the prevailing circumstances reasonably require.
Conformably, the diligence which the law requires an
Because of what happened, petitioner cancelled her individual to observe and exercise varies according to
trip to Baguio City and reported the incident to the nature of the situation in which happens to be, and
the authorities concerned. the importance of the act which he has to perform.

Applying the above contemplation of negligence to

the case at bar, the petitioner was negligent in
B. ALLEGATIONS the performance of her duties as Cashier. She did
not do her best, as dictated by the attendant
Petitioner wrote the Commission on Audit (COA) circumstances, to safeguard the public funds
begging to be relieved of accountability (Request entrusted to her, as such Cashier.
for Relief of Accountability) for the loss of
subject government funds allegedly taken by Upon verification and ocular inspection it was
robbers, invoking Section 73 of P.D. 1445. found out that VISCA had a concrete vault/room
with a steel door secured by a big Yale padlock,
Petitioner theorizes that what she did was what which was very much safer than the unlocked
any reasonable person would have done under the storage cabinet in which petitioner placed the
attendant facts and circumstances and therefore, government funds in question. It is irrefutable
she should not be held liable for the effects of that a locked vault/room is safer than an unlocked
what she calls a fortuitous event over which she storage cabinet.
had no control.
Furthermore, it is worthy to consider against the
..But the COA denied. petitioner her failure to follow the frequency of
deposit prescribed by Joint COA-MOF Circular No.
The COA opined that the concrete vault is more 1-81. It was firmly established that she did not
secured for safekeeping purposes compared to the make a single deposit during the month of March,
"unlocked storage cabinet" where the subject 1990. Had she complied with the said circular, the
payroll money was placed. While it is true that ill-fated government funds would not have been
the concrete vault could not be seen directly by exposed to the danger of robbery. Not only that,
the guard on duty at the lobby, the same is true the failure of petitioner to turn over to Ms.
also insofar as the storage cabinet is concerned . Anicia C. Fernandez, VISCA Disbursing Officer, the
. . The contention of Mrs. Bulilan that "the payroll money and collections to be needed by the
storage cabinet is strategically placed in an area school while she was out on travel was another
which can be seen directly by the guard on duty" indication of her non-compliance with the internal
is misleading. rules of VISCA.

Thus, the Court concluded that the COA correctly

denied petitioner's request for relief from
C. PROCEDURAL HISTORY
responsibility.
With the denial of her motion for reconsideration,
petitioner filed Petition for Review under Rule
45.