11/9/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly procedure taken against the employees prior to their dismissal. In the said case, the Court rejected a shipmaster's report which allegedly contained a collation of excerpts from the ship's logbook. The Court further opined that the failure to produce the logbook or at least make photocopies of the pertinent pages thereof would reasonably suggest that there were no entries in the logbook that could have established the acts and offenses allegedly committed by the seafarer-employee.[24] A similar observation obtains in this case. The decklog extract presented by the petitioners is a mere collation of the supposed contents of the ship's logbook. The petitioners did not present the logbook itself or even photocopies of the relevant pages thereof. Their only excuse is that the captain of the ship is obliged by law to keep the logbook. Hence, they could not present it before the labor tribunals. However, this does not explain why they failed to present even photocopies of the pertinent pages of the logbook. Thus, as aptly observed by the appellate court, the non-presentation of the ship's logbook or copies of the pertinent pages thereof raises doubts as to the occurrence of Constantino's alleged infractions. Interestingly, the petitioners also invoked Abacast in support of their cause. In the present petition for review, the petitioners even correctly argued that what the Court did in Abacast was to reject a typewritten collation of excerpts of what could be the logbook and rule that what should have been submitted in evidence was the logbook itself or authenticated copies of the pertinent pages thereof. Unfortunately, it would seem that the petitioners failed to comprehend that the typewritten decklog extract they submitted is similar to the typewritten collation of excerpts which has been rejected by the Court in Abacast. As such, the decklog extract does not deserve any consideration. The appellate court also properly disregarded Vera's January 6, 2008 letter-report as self-serving. As correctly pointed out by the appellate court, the letter was unsubstantiated by any other evidence. Moreover, the letter-report is inconsistent with all the other pieces of evidence presented by the petitioners. It must be noted that among the accusations hurled against Constantino, the incident which allegedly transpired on January 5, 2008, and which is the subject of the January 6, 2008 letter-report could be considered as the gravest. Indeed, in the said letterreport, there is an allegation of an attempt on the part of Constantino to inflict bodily harm against his superior officer with the use of a tool. Curiously, however, Capt. Kolidas made no mention of this incident in his facsimile messages. In particular, while the facsimile messages and decklog extract mentioned the incidents on January 2, 2008, and January 17, 2008, no reference was made to Constatino's alleged threats and attempts to harm Vera on January 5, 2008. This is significant because if the facsimile messages and the decklog extract indeed contain the true reproduction of the relevant entries in the ship's logbook regarding Constantino's offenses, which is what the petitioners would want the Court to believe, then it only follows that the reason the January 5, 2008 incident was not mentioned in the decklog extract, is because no entry regarding such incident exists in the ship's logbook. The lack of any entry relating to the January 5, 2008 incident consequently creates doubt https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/65452 8/14