Will the unreasonable nondeployment of a seafarer entitle him to payment of actual damages? The most recent case of Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group, Inc. and Chung Gai Ship Management vs. Sulpecio Medequillo, Jr. (G.R. No. 177498, January 18, 2012) confirms the standing rule that a seafarer must indeed be compensated as a result of the unreasonable failure of his employer to deploy him notwithstanding his execution of an employment contract duly approved by the POEA.
In the above-cited case, the seafarer was initially hired by his employers as Third Assistant Engineer on board an ocean-going vessel for nine (9) months. After barely three (3) months of service, he was ordered to be repatriated by the ship master. Upon his return to Manila, he was transferred employment by his employers with another vessel for the same period of nine (9) months under the first contract. His second contract was approved by the POEA. Despite the commencement of his second contract however, his employers refused to deploy him for no apparent reason. Left with no other choice, the seafarer filed a case for illegal dismissal for the first contract and for failure to deploy under the second contract. The arbiter, the NLRC, and the Court of Appeals all ruled for the seafarer, agreeing that while the employers cannot be held liable under the first contract since the second contract novated it, the employers are liable for breach of the second contract.
The Supreme Court likewise sided with the seafarer, finding that there was a innovation of the first contract. On the matter of the non-deployment of the seafarer without any valid reason, the High Court explained that the seafarer has a remedy in such a case even if the employment contract has not yet commenced and he has yet to actually depart from the airport or seaport in the port of hire. For clarity, the Court distinguished between the perfection of contract’ on the one hand, which took place when the parties agreed on the object and the cause as well as the terms of the contract, and ‘commencement of the employer-employee relationship’ on the other hand, when the seafarer would have been actually deployed. The ‘perfection of contract’ brings about certain rights, the breach of which may give rise to a cause of action. Taking note of the case of Santiago v. CF Sharp Crew Management, Inc. (G.R. No. 162419, July 10, 2007), the Court observed that since there was non-deployment of the seafarer herein which constituted as a breach by the employers of the parties’ agreement, the employers are liable to pay the seafarer actual damages in the form of the loss of nine (9) months’ worth of salary as stated in the employment contract.