On 3 January 1987, Atlas Fertilizer Corp (Atlas) shipped 13,000 bags of fertiliser from Sangi, Toledo City, to Iloilo City, on the MV Ana Alexandria owned by Northern Mindanao Transport Co Inc (Northern). The petitioner, Provident Insurance Corp (Provident), insured the shipment against damage or loss. When the shipment reached Iloilo City, one bag of fertiliser was missing and 188 bags sustained unrecovered spillage of 887.50 kgs. Additional unrecovered spillage of 1,712.50 kgs from 118 torn bags was incurred while the shipment was being transported from the vessel to Atlas' warehouse by broker Benny Espinosa Trucking Services (Benny).

Provident paid out under the insurance policy and then sued Northern for reimbursement before the Metropolitan Trial Court of Makati (MTC). After the papers were filed, but pending resolution of Provident's motion to admit its complaint to implead Benny, the MTC dismissed the complaint under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA) for having been filed beyond the one-year reglementary period. Provident appealed to the regional trial Court (RTC), and then to the Court of Appeals (CA), but was unsuccessful, so appealed again to the Supreme Court.

Held: The petition is denied. The judgment of the CA is affirmed.

Aside from maintaining that the COGSA reglementary period is not applicable to domestic commerce, Provident also asserts that what it raised before the CA was a question of fact. On 9 March 1990, this Court issued Circular No 2-90 setting guidelines to be observed in appeals to the Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court:

4. Erroneous Appeals. - An appeal taken to either the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals by the wrong or inappropriate mode shall be dismissed. ...

c) Raising issues purely of law in the Court of Appeals, or appeal by wrong mode. - If an appeal under Rule 41 is taken from the Regional Trial Court to the Court of Appeals and therein the appellant raises only questions of law, the appeal shall be dismissed, issues purely of law not being reviewable by said court. So, too, if an appeal is attempted from the judgment rendered by a Regional Trial Court in the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction by notice of appeal, instead of by petition for review, the appeal is inefficacious and should be dismissed.

d) No transfer of appeals erroneously taken. - No transfer of appeals erroneously taken to the Supreme Court or to the Court of Appeals to whichever of these tribunals has appropriate appellate jurisdiction will be allowed; continued ignorance or willfull disregard of the law on appeals will not be tolerated.

Since only questions of law were raised before the CA, this petition should be dismissed under Circular No 2-90. As pointed out by the CA, the petitioner admitted in its petition that what it filed was a 'Petition for Review on Appeal upon a question of law of the Decision of the Honorable Presiding Judge of Branch 64 of the Regional Trial Court of Makati, Metro Manila'. Petitioner cannot now belatedly retract this admission.

Specifically, the following questions were raised before the CA: (a) whether the RTC erred in affirming the dismissal of the MTC considering the alleged valid and meritorious claims of plaintiff; (b) whether the RTC erred in dismissing the case on the ground of prescription that was not raised as a defence by the other party, and; (c) whether the RTC erred in applying COGSA, and holding that the action had prescribed because more than one year had elapsed from the delivery of the cargo to the consignee on 13 January 1987 to the filing of the complaint on 9 November 1988.

As correctly observed by the CA, the second and third issues are evidently pure questions of law because their resolution is based on facts not in dispute. With regard to the first question, Provident argues that it was necessary to go over the records. That is incorrect. Whether the MTC was correct in dismissing the case grounded on prescription and, corollarily, whether the dismissal on such ground may be had without going into the merits, are questions of law which do not require an examination of the facts on record.