NLRC's assumption of jurisdiction on an intra-corporate controversy: A prior resort fallacy?

• Main Author: Caraan, Hilario S.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2012
• Subjects: Justice, Administration of > Philippines; Jurisdiction > Philippines; Philippines. National Labor Relations Commission; Jurisdiction; Law
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/13421
• Institution: De La Salle University

The legal brief raises a timely concern against the doctrine of prior resort where courts cannot decide a legal controversy within the jurisdiction of administrative tribunals until the latter's exercise of their expertise in resolving technical and intricate matters. The National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) is one of these tribunals entrusted by law to exercise such quasi-judicial authority in view of its expertise on employer-employee relations.When administrative jurisdiction is assumed by the NLRC, whether correctly or erroneously, litigants become duty-bound to respect its processes. However, when counts finally declare these administrative tribunals to be wanting of jurisdiction they assumed, litigants necessary suffer the consequences of either their inadvertence of maladministration of justice. No matter how it is called, the reversed and the forthcoming legal processes undeniably remain to be at the expense of litigants' limited resources. But no matter how it is called, the primordial consideration in the doctrine of prior resort is still their supposed administrative technical expertise.Nevertheless, no matter how it is called, the governance issue remains to be "Who shall guard the judicial guardians?" The brief has unequivocally demonstrated that efficient administration of justice requires continuous updating by quasi-judicial officers of their knowledge of the laws and regulations they are supposed to interpret. As the researcher-presentor raises the issue, he acknowledges the fact that while Philippine laws and procedures have the ready answers, the public have yet to feel the solution.The legal brief attempts to persuade the Supreme Court of the Philippines that both the Labor Artbiter and the NLRC have committed serious blunders on the well-entrenched principle that they have no jurisdiction over intra-corporate controversies, and that their vehement assumption of jurisdiction on the case discloses an infirmity on the doctrine of prior resort.