4/20/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly have resulted in prejudice to a party's substantive rights.[27] Especially in the aspect of establishing facts, due process considerations require that judgments must conform to and be supported by the pleadings and evidence presented in court.[28] Deciding based on evidence is an essential attribute of due process which properly informs (especially those who will be deprived of life, liberty or property) the reasons for the verdict which pronounced the rights and obligations of contending parties in litigation. In this case, it has already been shown that the records lack substantial evidence to show that Castillon's colon cancer was work-related. To force the application of social justice principles by discarding evidentiary requirements just so an underprivileged party may benefit at the expense of the other is to betray the same principles. The constitutional commitment to the policy of social justice cannot be understood to mean that every labor dispute shall automatically be decided in favor of labor.[29] Such constitutional and legal protection equally recognizes the employer's right and prerogative to manage its operation according to reasonable standards and norms of fair play.[30] Accordingly, broad and generic principles—such as social justice— cannot be used as substitutes in place of the quantum of evidence required to establish a fact or inference. Doing so would violate the basic tenets of due process and would amount to the desecration of the principle of social justice itself. III.Drawing the line between applying social justice principles and sufficiency of evidence requires the Court to weigh the longterm effects of its decisions. It was first declared by this Court in More Maritime Agencies, Inc., et al. v. National Labor Relations Commission, et al.[31] that: "[e]very workman brings with him to his employment certain infirmities, and while the employer is not the insurer of the health of his employees, he takes them as he finds them, and assumes the risk of having a weakened condition aggravated by some injury which might not hurt or bother a perfectly normal, healthy person."[32] Such ruling is consistent with the disposition in the instant case in favor of Castillon. Here, the ponencia cited the case of Leonis Navigation Co., Inc., et al. v. Villamater, et al.[33] which considered colon cancer as a compensable disease by reason of being work-related because, even if the NLRC and the Labor Arbiter found that seafarer Villamater's "dietary provisions while at sea increased his risk of contracting colon cancer because he had no choice of what to eat on board except those provided on the vessels and these consisted mainly of high-fat, high-cholesterol, and low-fiber foods," the employers "were silent when they argued that his affliction was brought about by diet and genetics." At this point, it is reasonable to conclude that the Court in Leonis did not give a clear explanation (aside from the fact that such https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/66406 30/35