Jun is the owner and operator of a security agency which had an existing contract with a government financial institution (GFI). Upon the expiration of the contract, Jun and the GFI became embroiled in a court suit which ended up in a Compromise Agreement wherein the GFI agreed to conduct a new public bidding with Jun’s agency (CSA) being already considered as a qualified participant. It was also agreed that CSA shall continue to provide security services at the GFI until a new public bidding is actually conducted and a valid award is made.
In the new public bidding for the security services, CSA lost and the contract was awarded to another agency. Convinced that there was fraud and arbitrariness, CSA and Jun filed an action for damages and injunction with an application for a temporary restraining order. They prayed that, preliminarily, the GFI be restrained from terminating CSA’s services and that the award made in favor of the other agency be annulled with penal and exemplary damages against the GFI for making such award. Pending trial on the merits, the lower court issued a temporary restraining order and subsequently granted the writ of preliminary injunction after due hearing. It ordered the GFI to cease and desist from terminating the services of CSA and from proceeding with the award to the other agency.
The GFI and the members of the public bidding committee questioned this order via a petition for certiorari before the Court of Appeals (CA). Immediately, the CA issued an order enjoining the trial court from enforcing the preliminary injunction it issued.
Then after hearing, the CA rendered a decision nullifying the temporary restraining order and the writ of preliminary injunction issued by the lower court against the GFI. It also ordered the dismissal of the main case filed by CSA and Jun which was still to be tried in the lower court only the weight of the evidence presented during the hearing for the preliminary injunction.
Was the CA correct?
No.
The main action for injunction is distinct from the ancillary remedy of preliminary injunction which cannot exist except only as a part or an incident of an independent action or proceeding. As a matter of course, in the main action for injunction, the auxiliary remedy of preliminary injunction, whether prohibitory or mandatory, may issue. Under the present state of the law, the main action of injunction seeks a judgment embodying a final injunction which is distinct from, and should not be confused with the provisional remedy of preliminary injunction, the sole object of which is to preserve the status quo until the merits can be heard.
A writ of preliminary injunction is generally based on initial and incomplete evidence. It is not conclusive and complete for only a sampling is needed to give the court an idea of the justification for the preliminary injunction pending the decision of the case on the merits. As such, the findings of fact and opinion of the lower court when issuing the writ of preliminary injunction are interlocutory in nature and made even before the trial on the merits is commenced or terminated.
In deciding on the petition for certiorari filed by the GFI, the CA did not limit itself to determining that the writ of preliminary injunction was issued by the trial court with grave abuse of discretion amounting to a lack or excess of jurisdiction. It overstepped its boundaries when it dismissed the main action for damages and injunction. The judgment in a certiorari proceeding questioning an interlocutory order was used to finally determine a main case which was still awaiting trial. In dismissing the main case, the CA ruled that the trial court made errors in judgment. But such errors are reviewable only by an appeal, since questions of fact are beyond the scope of a petition for certiorari.
The CA therefore exceeded its jurisdiction when it decided the main case for damages and injunction even when what was elevated before it was the question of the propriety of the issuance of the ancillary writ of preliminary injunction. The case should therefore be remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. (Urbanes, Jr. vs. Court of Appeals et al. G.R. 117964, March 28 2001).