NAPOCOR vs. CODILLA
                          G.R. No. 170491, April 4, 2007


Facts:

     M/V Dibena Win, a vessel of foreign registry owned and operated by private respondent Bangpai Shipping Co., allegedly bumped and damaged petitioner’s Power Barge 209 which was then moored at Cebu International Port. Thus, petitioner filed before the Cebu RTC a complaint for damages against private respondent Bangpai Shipping Co., for alleged damages caused on the petitioner’s power barges. Subsequently, petitioner impleaded herein private respondent Wallem Shipping Inc. as additional defendant. 

    After adducing evidence during the trial of the case, petitioner filed a formal offer of evidence before the lower court. Private respondents filed their respective objections to petitioner’s formal offer of evidence.

   Public respondent judge issued the assailed order denying the admission and excluding from the records some of petitioner’s exhibits and submarkings on the ground that the documents formally offered as evidence were photocopies, not the originals. Respondent Wallem Shipping invoked that Xerox copies do not constitute the electronic evidence defined in Section 1 of Rule 2 of the Rules of Electronic Evidence. Further, respondent judge ruled that the information in those Xerox or photocopies was not received, recorded, retrieved or produced electronically, and that electronic evidence must be authenticated, which the petitioner failed to do. Finally, the required Affidavit to prove admissibility and evidentiary weight of the alleged electronic evidence was not executed, much less presented in evidence. On petition for certiorari, CA ruled in favor of respondent judge.


Issue: 

   Whether or not petitioner is correct in its contention that the photocopies he offered as formal evidence before the trial court are the functional equivalent of their original based on its inimitable interpretation of the Rules of Electronic Evidence.

Held: 

   An “electronic document” refers to information or the representation of information, data, figures, symbols or other models of written expression, described or however represented, by which a right is established or an obligation extinguished, or by which a fact may be proved or affirmed, which is received, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced eletronically. It includes digitally signed documents and any printout, readable by sight or other means which accurately reflects the electronic data message or electronic document. The rules use the word “information” to define an electronic document received, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced electronically. This would suggest that an electronic document is relevant only in terms of the information contained therein, similar to any other document which is presented in evidence as proof of its contents. However, what differentiates an electronic document from a paper-based document is the manner by which information is processed; clearly the information contained in an electronic document is received, recorded, transmitted, stored, processed, retrieved or produced electronically.

   A perusal of the information contained in the photocopies submitted by petitioner will reveal that not all of the contents therein, such as signatures of the persons who purportedly signed the documents, may be recorded or produced electronically. Hence, the argument of the petitioner that since these paper printouts were produced through electronic process, then these photocopies are electronic document as defined in the Rules on Electronic Evidence is obviously an erroneous, if not preposterous, interpretation of the law. Having thus declared that the offered photocopies are not tantamount to electronic documents, it is consequential that the same may not be considered as the functional equivalent of their original as decreed in the law.