5/28/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly US$100,000.00; moral and exemplary damages of P10,000.00 each; and P10,000.00 in attorney’s fees. It however denied Ruizo’s claim for sick wages of US$2,386.50 because it was raised for the first time on appeal. The CA found credence in Ruizo’s submission that his employment with the petitioners was covered by a CBA “as he was informed by private respondents’ officers that he is being deployed to a vessel that is covered by a CBA as a reward for his good performance as Chief Cook for several years.”[14] Further, the CA sustained Ruizo’s position that he is entitled to permanent total disability compensation because he was unable to work as chief cook for more than 120 days. It denied the petitioners’ subsequent motion for reconsideration.[15] The Petition The petitioners now ask this Court to set aside the CA judgment, on the grounds that the CA committed a reversible error when it: (1) ruled that Ruizo’s employment was covered by a verbal CBA; (2) held that since Ruizo was unable to work for more than 120 days, he is automatically entitled to permanent total disability benefits; and (3) awarded Ruizo moral and exemplary damages, as well as attorney’s fees. The petitioners bewail the CA’s admission of the CBA that allegedly covered Ruizo’s employment as basis for the award. They question the CBA’s existence as it had not been reduced to writing; even if it does exist, Ruizo adduced no evidence that it applies to him (Ruizo would later on submit a copy of a CBA between AMOSUP and an unnamed employer).[16] They reiterate their submission to the CA (through their motion for reconsideration) that AMOSUP issued a certification[17] that M/V Harutamou “is/was not covered by any Collective Bargaining Agreement between AMOSUP and any foreign principal employer.” On their second assignment of error, the petitioners maintain that the “so called 120 Day Rule and the latter 240 Day Rule are not iron-clad rules that should apply to all cases.”[18] They argue that the “[r]espondent is guilty of medical abandonment and as such, the 120 or 240 Day Rules should not apply to him.”[19] The 120-day rule laid down in Crystal Shipping, they point out, had already been reversed, or at least modified, by this Court in its clarificatory Resolution[20] dated February 12, 2007 in the very same Crystal Shipping case. They stress, as the LA did, that in said Resolution, the Court clarified that the POEA-SEC (series of 1996) did not measure disability in terms of number of days but by gradings only. In Crystal Shipping, the Court said that since the seafarer’s physician rated his disability as Grade 1, the same was necessarily total and permanent, regardless of the number of days he was disabled. In any event, they continue, the CA erred when it applied the 120-day rule under the Labor Code in Ruizo’s case, overlooking the fact that as a seafarer, Ruizo was a contractual employee whose terms of employment, including disability compensation claims, were governed by contract and not by the Labor Code as the Court declared in NYK-FIL Ship Mgmt., Inc. &/or NYK Ship Mgmt. Hk., Ltd. v. NLRC.[21] The petitioners elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/56718 3/11