Zulueta vs Court of Appeals

Caption: 
Cecilia Zulueta vs Court of Appeals and Alfredo Martin 
(253 SCRA 699) 
GR no. 107383 February 20, 1996

Facts: 

Cecilia Zulueta is the Petitioner who offset the private papers of his husband Dr. Alfredo Martin. Dr. Martin is a doctor of medicine while he is not in his house His wife took the 157 documents consisting of diaries, cancelled check, greeting cards, passport and photograph, private respondents between her Wife and his alleged paramours, by means of forcibly opened the drawers and cabinet. Cecilia Zulueta filed the papers for the evidence of her case of legal separation and for disqualification from the practice of medicine against her husband.

Dr. Martin brought the action for recovery of the documents and papers and for damages against Zulueta, with the Regional Trial Court of Manila, Branch X. the trial court rendered judgment for Martin, declaring him the capital/exclusive owner of the properties described in paragraph 3 of Martin’s Complaint or those further described in the Motion to Return and Suppress and ordering Zulueta and any person acting in her behalf to a immediately return the properties to Dr. Martin and to pay him P5,000.00, as nominal damages; P5,000.00, as moral damages and attorney’s fees; and to pay the costs of the suit. On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the Regional Trial Court. Zulueta filed the petition for review with the Supreme Court.

Issue:

The papers and other materials obtained from forcible entrusion and from unlawful means are admissible as evidence in court regarding marital separation and disqualification from medical practice. 

Ruling/Held:

The documents and papers are inadmissible in evidence. The constitutional injunction declaring “the privacy of communication and correspondence to be inviolable is no less applicable simply because it is the wife who thinks herself aggrieved by her husband’s infidelity, who is the party against whom the constitutional provision is to be enforced. 

The only exception to the prohibition in the Constitution is if there is a lawful order from a court or when public safety or order requires otherwise, as prescribed by law. Any violation of this provision renders the evidence obtained inadmissible for any purpose in any proceeding. The intimacies between husband and wife do not justify any one of them in breaking the drawers and cabinets of the other and in ransacking them for any telltale evidence of marital infidelity. A person, by contracting marriage, does not shed his/her integrity or his right to privacy as an individual and the constitutional protection is ever available to him or to her. The law insures absolute freedom of communication between the spouses by making it privileged. Neither husband nor wife may testify for or against the other without the consent of the affected spouse while the marriage subsists. Neither may be examined without the consent of the other as to any communication received in confidence by one from the other during the marriage, save for specified exceptions. But one thing is freedom of communication; quite another is a compulsion for each one to share what one knows with the other. And this has nothing to do with the duty of fidelity that each owes to the other.