MEL STA.

MARIA | The law as legal

excuse for the 'inhumanity of
indifference'
By: Mel Sta. Maria
June 27, 2013 1:03 AM

InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
Are we ready to help people we see dying on the streets? C.J. Chancos Inhumanity of
indifference is a heart-wrenching article in InterAksyon.com that compels one to
introspectively look at ones own values. He narrates how he personally witnessed people and an
institution not extending aid to a dying person on the street. He tried to help when he saw the
dying man but it was too late.
He concludes:
I am struck at the reality of how cheap life is, in a society that wears its values and casts them off
when they prove inconvenient; casts them off like they shrug off countless, nameless millions
because they are somehow beneath us.
Its as cheap as our collective hypocrisy.
Luchi Cruz Valdes and I talked about the story of C.J. Chanco in our show Relasyon. And we
too were shaken from our sense of complacency, making us introspectively examine our own
values. And though the right thing to do was very clear and that was to help, we wondered
what exactly would we have done had we been there? Would we have also ignored that
person? Are we part of this collective hyprocrisy? Tough things to ponder but necessary. C.J
Chancos article truly impacted my sensibilities and will continue to positively disturb me.
Meanwhile, allow me to put some legal, not moral, perspective on this.
Under our 80-year-old Revised Penal Code, there are only very limited situations when a person
is under a legal obligation to help, rescue or run to the aid of a person in distress. Article 275
provides that
The penalty of arresto mayor shall be imposed upon:
1. Any one who shall fail to render assistance to any person whom he shall find in an uninhabited
place wounded or in danger of dying, when he can render such assistance without detriment to
himself, unless such omission shall constitute a more serious offense.
2. Anyone who shall fail to help or render assistance to another whom he has accidentally
wounded or injured.
3. Anyone who, having found an abandoned child under seven years of age, shall fail to deliver
said child to the authorities or to his family, or shall fail to take him to a safe place.
Arresto Mayor means a jail term ranging from one (1) month and one (1) day to six (6)
months. Considering that the maximum is not more than 6 years, the one convicted can apply
for probation which means he may not serve a single day in jail and will just be asked to report
to his probation officer under conditions ordered by the court.
Under the first paragraph of Article 275, the failure to render assistance must be in an
uninhabited place. So , if the omission was in the middle of the city like the one witnessed by
C.J. Chanco, no liabilility attaches. There is no legal obligation to render legal assistance.
Under the second paragraph, the subject must be one whom he has accidentally wounded or
injured whether it happened in an uninhabited place or inhabited one. So if you have nothing to
do with the persons injury whom you saw on the street, there is no legal obligation to help or
render assistance.
The last paragraph refers to an abandoned child under seven years old. Hence, if the child is
exactly seven years old or over, there is no legal obligation to make delivery to the authorities,
his family or to a safe place under the Revised Penal Code. You can technically ignore the child,
which may be immoral but nevertheless not illegal.
In short, unless the situation clearly falls under the three paragraphs of Article 275, there is no
legal obligation to rescue, help, or render assistance to a person in distress, much more dying.
Parenthetically, under our medical laws, a doctor must extend medical aid to a person brought
to the hospital for emergency and if he does not do so, he can be fined or his license may even
be revoked pursuant to Republic Act Nos. and 2382 and 6615. The hospital and its
administrators where the doctor is employed may even be held liable.
A number of states in the United States now apply the so-called the Rescue Doctrine. This
posits that the rescuer, who himself has been injured in rescuing the victim, can seek damages
from the one who caused the original injury to the victim. While there has been no occasion yet
to apply this doctrine in the Philippines, it is consistent with the Philippine rule on proximate
cause. This rule states that whoever was the root cause of all injuries will be ultimately liable
for damages.
However, under the Rescue Doctrine, if it is shown that the act of the rescuer rose to the level of
rash or reckless, the rescuer himself can be held liable for the injuries suffered by the rescued
 person. When a rescuer decides to make the rescue, he then is under the legal obligation to
continue the rescue and should he stop or should he be negligent, he will be liable for damages.
There is no case yet where our Supreme Court applied this rule. But considering that our law on
damages is based on fault patterned after US laws, it is not improbable that this rescuer-liability
can be applied in the Philippines. A rescuer may be held liable for damages by the rescued.
Another significant law effective in some US states is the Good Samaritan Law. This law
exempt any person coming to the rescue of another from any form of liability. He is made
immune from any claim for damages. The law is intended to encourage people to come to the
aid of the distressed without fear of being sued. Our laws and jurisprudence have nothing like
this.
Reviewing our 80-year-old rescue law, one finds that not only is it full of loopholes, it has
also not caught up with the modern legal trends that safeguard the genuine altruistic motives
of a rescuer. Unfortunately, its continued effectivity has even enhanced what C.J. Chanco
described as our collective hypocrisy. The law, ironically, is the legal excuse for the continued
inhumanity of indifference in our society.
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(Editors Note: A shorter version of this piece was posted on C.J. Chancos Facebook page.
InterAksyon.com sought C.J.s permission to run the piece. He sent us this.)

I was at first reluctant to write this. Afraid of being accused of taking literary advantage of lifes many
tragedies. But some things cannot be left unsaid.

On a rainy Friday night, a man lay motionless on the sidewalk below the LRT right across De La
Salle University-Manila. It was clear he was sick, and needed urgent attention. He was a de-
padyak driver.

Security guards from DLSU were the first to arrive on the scene, I was told. His pedicab had stalled
for half an hour in a corner of Taft before I arrived. I would not have seen him if the jeepney Id been
riding had not stopped at Quirino, and I had to walk the rest of the way to Vito Cruz.

The guards were reluctant to shelter him at the university. The DLSU clinic had apparently refused to
grant him entry.

Maybe one of the nurses could come out and see him then? I asked. To verify, at the very least,
whether or not he was still alive?

They would have to check. Would have to seek bureaucratic approval from the school authorities.
Bureaucratic approval for the life of a man, who just might be a con artist. It was Standard Operating
Procedure, after all. Perfectly understandable.

Okay. Did he have a phone? Maybe we could call his relatives.

There was nothing in his belt bag. Someone had probably snatched it in the quarter of an hour or so
that he lay slumped motionless inside his pedicab before the guards arrived to check on him.

(Only the DLSU guards, by the way, did anything. There were a couple of cops and an MMDA officer
on hand and they did all they could -- as passive observers.)

I felt for a pulse. Nothing. The guards performed CPR for the second time. One of the bystanders,
recognizing him, had rushed to alert his relatives. He was from Munoz.

We looked desperately for a cab, an FX, a bus, another pedicab -- anything -- to take him to the
hospital. A full 20 minutes ticked by, and not one of the cars stopped to pick him up, or even paused
to see what was happening. Not even in Pinoy usisero spirit.

His family arrived minutes later. Amid the increasingly hysterical wails of a woman, presumably his
wife, I could only catch that it was his pangalawang beses (Second what? Stroke? Heart attack?
Seizure?)

At this point, I knew it was too late. Even a man without a medical degree can understand the first 10
minutes after a heart attack or a seizure can mean the difference beween life and death.

At this point, not one of the La Salle students streaming out of Henry Sy Hall and into their private
cars bothered to look. A crowd, however, did gather around the mans body, which was rapidly
turning cold: his fellow de-padyak drivers, JC, Renzo, and the other street kids, who were flagging
down occupied taxis and banging car windows to get them to pay attention. Not one of them ever
did, and only a tricycle driver -- probably another relative -- finally agreed to take him to Ospital ng
Maynila.

The rain was pouring down, of course, and it was rush hour. Perfectly understandable.

I, for my part, was useless, as usual. I never got the mans name. As his family brought his body
(now cold and stiff) into the pedicab, I could only watch the scene unfold. Moments like these, I
would later realize, bring a certain mental clarity, a numb blankness, before questions (and guilt)
start nagging at the back of ones head.

If the man did not have to pedal in vain for hours on end, ferrying St. Scho, CSB, and DLSU students
to and from the bars and discos around Taft -- in the heat and the rain, for less than a hundred pesos
a day -- would he have suffered the same fate?

If he had collapsed in a sports car, carried a La Salle ID (as I did) -- or was, for instance, someones
prized purebred pet dog and not a human being -- would De La Salle Inc. have let him in?

He was around 50 -- old enough to be my father. Did he have children? A wife? A pet dog? Could he
afford maintenance meds? Did he have a doctor? Did he have health insurance?

If his family took him to a public hospital, would they have to foot the bill?

Would the doctors even care? Certainly the school hardly did.
It was half an hour or more before the guards reached the man and called for an ambulance. And
none arrived. They called the police first. The mans relatives from Munoz were ahead of them (while
the PNP and MMDA officers looked on, stupefied).

Now, be fair, Ive been told. What if the school simply was not prepared to deal with such an
incident?

The university clinic doubtless has proper equipment to deal with emergency situations, in or off
campus. The school has enough money to spare to refurbish our canteens and make each one look
like a five-star resto -- and not enough money for the clinic? The families of La Salle students do not
pay 150,000 to 200,000 thousand pesos a year for nothing.

By the time I arrived, the man had no pulse or it was so weak none of us could feel it. I felt the
guards, who have doubtless received first aid training, knew what they were doing. They had
administered CPR before I came.

Again, I asked if we could at least carry the man into the south gate lobby - which was just a few
meters away from where he lay. The guards refused, not until they received permission from the
school administration or the security office. Again I asked if a school nurse could at least come out
and check on him. They had received no approval from "sa loob," so we could nothing.

Again, it was raining hard outside.

I am not blaming the guards. The La Salle guards did all they could at the time and had already gone
far beyond the call of duty. I'm blaming whoever was "inside": the baboon who had neither the heart
nor the brains nor the common sense to at least say, yes, bring him in. This is bureaucracy at its
finest. The school's inaction was inexcusable whichever way you look at it.

It was also probably afraid of having to foot the bill if they had brought the man to the hospital. They
would have had no such qualms if Henry Sy tripped on some sidewalk on Taft, broke his ankle, and
had to be brought to the clinic, ASAP. The man can afford it, and in fact paid for his own building on
campus.

So yes, this is -- at least partly -- a rich versus poor issue. Bureaucracy with all its attendant ills
arises from a system that prizes efficiency more than humanity, money more than compassion and
common sense. Social insensitivity is part and parcel of a system that has normalized inequality,
promotes fear and distrust of the other -- especially the rabble on the streets that we would rather
flush away.

Are we being unfair to the school? Perhaps. But there is no fair play when a man's life is at stake
and we did nothing, when we could have done everything. And I say we -- because I am as much
involved in what happened, and what is happening (to the university and to the wider world) as the
baboon inside.

We are told, at times like these, not to overreact, not to be emotional. That it happens all the time.
That there is nothing we can do. That children and old men collapse of neglect, starvation, or sheer
exhaustion, every single day. That they die ignominious deaths out on the streets, in slums, in war
zones, in prisons, in dumpsites, in distant lands far from their families.
That they drop dead like flies -- as nameless in death as in birth. The fact is: The way we treat these
nameless millions in death is in direct correlation with the way we regard them in life.

That is, like trash. To be flushed out of the streets.

I am struck at the callousness of universities that earn tens of millions of pesos to teach their
students how not to give a damn about the plight of the rest of society, in the world beyond their
white walls, beyond their conscience-tight, air-conditioned classrooms.

As though money can ever shield young people from reality. But they end up blinded, not
immunized.

I am struck at the reality of how cheap life is, in a society that wears its values and casts them off
when they prove inconvenient; casts them off like they shrug off countless, nameless millions
because they are somehow beneath us.

Its as cheap as our collective hypocrisy.

[See: The story of Reynaldo Carcillar, a pedicab driver who died on the streets of Manila]