6/5/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly however, pursued his claim without observing the laid-out procedure. He consulted physicians of his choice regarding his disability after Dr. Dacanay, the company-designated physician, issued her fit-to-work certification for him. There is nothing inherently wrong with the consultations as the POEA-SEC and the CBA allow him to seek a second opinion. The problem only arose when he pre-empted the mandated procedure by filing a complaint for permanent disability compensation on the strength of his chosen physicians' opinions, without referring the conflicting opinions to a third doctor for final determination. xxxx The filing of the complaint constituted a breach of Dumadag's contractual obligation to have the conflicting assessments of his disability referred to a third doctor for a binding opinion. The petitioners could not have possibly caused the non-referral to a third doctor because they were not aware that Dumadag secured separate independent opinions regarding his disability. Thus, the complaint should have been dismissed, for without a binding third opinion, the fit-to-work certification of the company-designated physician stands, pursuant to the POEA-SEC and the CBA. x x x xxxx Whatever his reasons might have been, Dumadag's disregard of the conflictresolution procedure under the POEA-SEC and the CBA cannot and should not be tolerated and allowed to stand, lest it encourage a similar defiance. We stress in this respect that we have yet to come across a case where the parties referred conflicting assessments of a seafarer's disability to a third doctor since the procedure was introduced by the POEA-SEC in 2000 whether the Court's ruling in a particular case upheld the assessment of the company-designated physician, as in Magsaysay Maritime Corporation v. National Labor Relations Commission (Second Division) and similar other cases, or sustained the opinion of the seafarer's chosen physician as in HFS Philippines, Inc. v. Filar, cited by the CA, and other cases similarly resolved. The third-doctor-referral provision of the POEA-SEC, it appears to us, has been honored more in the breach than in the compliance. This is unfortunate considering that the provision is intended to settle disability claims voluntarily at the parties' level where the claims can be resolved more speedily than if they were brought to court. Given the circumstances under which Dumadag pursued his claim, especially the fact that he caused the non-referral to a third doctor, Dr. Dacanay's fitto-work certification must be upheld. In Santiago v. Pacbasin Ship Management, Inc., the Court declared: "[t]here was no agreement on a third doctor who shall examine him anew and whose finding shall be final and binding, x x x [T]his Court is left without choice but to uphold the elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/61305 17/25