Socorro Ramirez v. Court of Appeals and Ester Garcia Case Digest

G.R. No. 93833
September 28, 1995

Facts

• A civil case for damages against respondent who allegedly vexed, insulted, and humiliated the petitioner in the latter’s office.
• Petitioner produced a verbatim transcript from a tape recorder. The recording was secretly made.
• Respondent filed a criminal case for violation of RA 4200 (An Act to prohibit and penalize wire-tapping and other related violations of private communication, and other purposes.”)
• The trial court dismissed the case while the Court of Appeals decided that the petitioner violated RA 4200.
• Hence, this petition on review for certiorari. Petitioner argued the following:
  • that provision of Article 4200 does not apply to the taping of private conversations by one of the parties of the conversation.
  • that R.A. 4200 penalizes the taping of a “private communication,” not a “private conversation” and that consequently, her act of secretly taping her conversation with private respondent was not illegal under the said act.

Issue

1. Whether or not RA 4200 does not apply to the taping of private conversations by one of the parties of the conversation?
2. Whether or not private conversation is different from private communication?

Held

1. No. As provided by the intent of the legislators, Section 1 of RA 4200 makes it illegal for any person, not authorized by all the parties to any private communication to secretly record such communication by means of a tape recorder. Since it is “any person” even a person privy to the conversation who tape or record his or her conversation with other person without the knowledge of the other party is a violator of RA 4200. Our lawmakers indeed contemplated to make illegal, unauthorized tape recording of private conversations or communications taken either by the parties themselves or by third persons. Socorro is a party to the conversation and the word any covers her.
2. No. The contention that the phrase “private communication” in Section 1 of R.A. 4200 does not include “private conversations” narrows the ordinary meaning of the word “communication” to a point of absurdity. The word communicate comes from the latin word communicare, meaning “to share or to impart.” In its ordinary signification, communication connotes the act of sharing or imparting, as in a conversation, or signifies the “process by which meanings or thoughts are shared between individuals through a common system of symbols (as language signs or gestures).” These definitions are broad enough to include verbal or non-verbal, written or expressive communications of “meanings or thoughts” which are likely to include the emotionally-charged exchange, on February 22, 1988, between petitioner and private respondent, in the privacy of the latter’s office. Any doubts about the legislative body’s meaning of the phrase “private communication” are, furthermore, put to rest by the fact that the terms “conversation” and “communication” were interchangeably used by Senator Tañada in his Explanatory Note to the bill quoted.