6/5/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly similar cases that seek injunction from regular courts, the resolution of the instant Petition is necessary in settling once and for all which between the DOLE Secretary and the RTC has jurisdiction over actions assailing a POEA Order that involves immediate enforcement of penalties for serious offenses such as cancellation of license. The Republic likewise buttresses its other arguments that Principalia failed to exhaust administrative remedies when it directly filed the injunction case with the RTC and that it committed forum-shopping.[23] Issue The central issue in this case is whether the RTC has jurisdiction over the injunction case. Our Ruling At the outset, it must be noted that the Petition is dismissible for being moot and academic. It should be recalled that what impelled Principalia to file the main action for injunction was the June 8, 2009 POEA Order directing the immediate cancellation of its license. Since Principalia could not then engage in recruitment activities because of the said Order, it resorted to the RTC to question and seek to enjoin such immediate cancellation for the obvious reason that it wanted to continue the operation of its business. Significantly, however, Principalia, to date, is a POEA-accredited recruitment agency licensed to do business until April 1, 2016.[24] As things stand, therefore, Principalia has no more claim for relief against POEA since this has been mooted by the latter's renewal of its license to do business. In fact and as mentioned, Principalia already moved for the dismissal of the injunction case before the RTC which the said court correctly granted. "A case becomes moot and academic when, by virtue of supervening events, there is no more actual controversy between the parties and no useful purpose can be served in passing upon the merits."[25] In Arevalo v. Planters Development Bank,[26] the Court expounded: The Constitution provides that judicial power 'includes the duty of the courts of justice to settle actual controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and enforceable.' The exercise of judicial power requires an actual case calling for it. The courts have no authority to pass upon issues through advisory opinions, or to resolve hypothetical or feigned problems or friendly suits collusively arranged between parties without real adverse interests. Furthermore, courts do not sit to adjudicate mere academic questions to satisfy scholarly interest, however intellectually challenging. As a condition precedent to the exercise of judicial power, an actual controversy between litigants must first exist. An actual case or controversy involves a conflict of legal rights, an assertion of opposite legal claims susceptible of judicial resolution, as distinguished from a hypothetical or abstract difference or dispute. There must be a contrariety elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/61203 4/9