Court allows PAL to sue striking pilots for damages

Manila Standard Today
September 12, 2011
By Rey E. Requejo

THE Court of Appeals has allowed Philippine Airlines to pursue P730 million in damages from the Airline Pilots Association of the Philippines and its former officers who joined an illegal strike in 1998 that crippled its international and domestic operations.

The court’s 13th Division said the National Labor Relations Commission erred when it dismissed the airline’s complaint for damages because it failed to file it within the three-year prescriptive period. It agreed with the airline that it could not file a complaint for damages until the Supreme Court had passed judgment on the strike’s legality.

“The Supreme Court decision resolving the illegality of the strike attained finality only on Aug. 29, 2002,” Associate Justice Ramon Cruz said in his decision.

“It was only then that private respondents’ act of abandoning their aircraft had been declared illegal and hence, they could already be held culpable for causing injury to petitioner’s business.”

The Pilot union’s officers and members struck on June 5, 1998, an action that the airline said was done deliberately to coincide with the peak season for air travel, and at a time when thousands of Filipinos abroad were set to travel to the Philippines for its 1998 centennial celebration.

The airline said the pilots abandoned their aircraft and passengers in Bangkok and San Francisco in California on the second day of the strike, stranding the passengers and forcing the airline to shoulder their hotel expenses.

The illegal strike also crippled the airline’s operations because it had to cancel flights and refund tickets.

The striking pilots ignored the Labor Department’s return-to-work order, prompting it to declare that they had lost their employment status.

Subsequently, the appellate court upheld the Labor Department’s ruling declaring the strike as illegal, and that prompted the pilots to elevate the case to the Supreme Court.

The high court dismissed the union’s petition on April 10, 2002, and that decision became final in August 2009.