2. Ong Chia v.

Republic 328 SCRA 749

Topic: Applicability of Rules of Evidence

Facts: Ong Chia was born in China but he came to the country when he was a boy and
stayed here since then. When he was 66 years old, he filed a petition to be admitted as
a Filipino citizen. He testified as to his qualifications and presented witnesses to
corroborate the facts which will admit him Filipino citizenship and the trial court granted
such petition. However, the Court of Appeals (CA) reversed the trial court’s decision
when the State appealed to it, annexing in its appellant's brief the pertinent
documents for naturalization which contends that petitioner failed to support his
petition with the appropriate documentary evidence. Ong Chia now contends
that the appellate court erred in considering the documents which had merely
been annexed by the State to its appellant's brief and that such documents, not
having been presented and formally offered as evidence, are mere scraps of paper.

Issue: Whether or not the documents annexed to the State’s appellant briefs should be
considered as evidence even if they were not formally introduced as evidence.

Ruling: Yes. The documents should be considered as evidence. In this case, the Supreme
Court held that the rule on formal offer of evidence (Rule 132, Section 34 of the Rules of
Court) now being invoked by petitioner is clearly not applicable to the present
case involving a petition for naturalization. Rule 143 of the Rules of Court states,
“These rules shall not apply to land registration, cadastral and election cases,
naturalization and insolvency proceedings, and other cases not therein provided for,
except by analogy or in a suppletory character and whenever practicable and
convenient .” The onl y instance when said rules may be applied by analogy
or suppletorily in s uch cases is whe n it is "practicable and convenient." In the
case at bar, petitioner claims that as a result of the failure of the State to present
and formally offer its documentary evidence before the trial court, he was denied
the right to object against their authenticity, effectively depriving him of his
fundamental right to procedural due process. However, the Supreme Court is not
persuaded, ruling that the reason for the rule prohibiting the admission of
evidence which has not been formally offered is to afford the opposite party the
chance to object to their admissibility. Petitioner cannot claim that he was deprived of
the right to object to the authenticity of the documents submitted to the appellate
court by the State. He could have included his objections, as he, in fact, did, in the brief
he filed with the Court of Appeals.