Saturday, August 23, 2008 Gross negligence By Dominador A. Almirante Labor case digest
THE record of employment of private respondent Melencia Asegurado with petitioner Acebedo Optical shows that she committed a series of absences and incidences of tardiness. Repeated memoranda were issued on her infractions. She was likewise repeatedly suspended.
For failure to heed a number of warnings, she was ultimately dismissed from the service by petitioner. Was the dismissal justified?
Ruling: No.
But even assuming for the sake of argument that the past infractions could still validly be the subject of future punishment, still there is no basis for petitioners’ claim that private respondent’s supposed habitual absenteeism and tardiness is a form of gross and habitual neglect of duty.
Under Article 282(b) of the Labor Code, gross and habitual neglect of duty by the employee of his duties is a just cause for the termination of the latter’s employment. To warrant removal from service, however, the negligence should not merely be gross but also habitual. In this case, assuming that the absences and tardiness of private respondent Asegurado were habitual, can they also be categorized as gross?
Gross negligence implies a want or absence of or failure to exercise even slight care or diligence, or the entire absence of care. It evinces a thoughtless disregard of consequences without exerting any effort to avoid them. Although there may have been times when private respondent’s absences were undertaken without the necessary approved leave applications, nevertheless, she would send word for when these would occur.
Moreover, quite telling is the fact that nowhere in the memoranda sent to private respondent was there any mention of a complaint relating to the quality of her work. As the present case does not show the presence of one of the two requisites to make the finding of negligence a just cause for dismissal. At the most, private respondent should have been further suspended from service for taking for granted that her leave would be approved by the personnel department of petitioner corporation. The penalty of dismissal is too harsh, considering that private respondent had been with the company for five years and, apparently, the management had no complaint as regards the former’s quality of work. (Acebedo Optical and Miguel Acebedo III versus NLRC, et. al. G.R. No. 150171, July 17, 2007).
