By Dr. Jesus L. Arranza

Product standards are meant to protect consumers from substandard goods. They are not for the benefit of the importers or the manufacturers because both need to conform with them.

With this, product standards should never be made a competition issue by one company against another in going to the trial court to seek an injunction on their implementation.

A court issuing a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the implementation of standards on a particular product is practically preventing the state from performing its constitutionally mandated duty to protect the people. This is the basis of the enactment of the Consumer Act (Republic Act 7394), which states:

ARTICLE 2. Declaration of Basic Policy. — It is the policy of the State to protect the interests of the consumer, promote his general welfare and to establish standards of conduct for business and industry. Towards this end, the State shall implement measures to achieve the following objectives:

1. 1. protection against hazards to health and safety;
   2. protection against deceptive, unfair and unconscionable sales acts and practices;

An injunction, therefore, against product standards is equivalent to a stop order on the State’s responsibility to protect the public against hazards to health and safety, deceptive, unfair, and unconscionable sales acts and practices.
If this is the case, which it obviously is, should the Supreme Court just allow the trial courts to continue issuing injunctions against product standards?

There are already about 1,000 RTCs in the Philippines. Thus, you can only imagine the number of judges that a businessman who does not want to adhere to government-mandated product standards can go to to get an injunction so he can continue to sell his products without regard to the welfare of the public.

With a simple petition from a non-complying trader, these trial courts can now easily overrule and put to waste the very existence of the Bureau of Product Standards (BPS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

These agencies put in months, or even years, of work — including consultations with all stakeholders, research, and product testing — to be able to set globally acceptable product quality norms to protect the consumers.

This, however, can just be set aside by a single paragraph in a trial court’s decision that basically says: “The BPS (or FDA) is hereby enjoined from implementing the quality standards on this product.”

In today’s set-up, the 1,000 trial courts all over the country can do this.

Take, for example, the case of the quality standards on flat glass; importers managed to secure injunction orders from two trial courts. The Makati court lifted the injunction after three years, but the Pasay court’s order is still in effect. With importers bringing the cases to the courts, I surmise that it is due to competition issues because I cannot understand how someone can disagree with standards. If you follow, you concur; if you don’t follow, you violate. This is also the case if a Filipino exporter wants to enter a foreign market, he needs to follow that country’s product standards; there are no ifs and buts. The same goes for us here.

If the importers would continue filing cases before the trial courts, this would be a never-ending cat-and-mouse game, with the consumers placed on the losing end.

It’s a violation of the State’s constitutional mandate and it is for the benefit of the millions of consumers, so it’s something that should be reviewed by the SC.

If there is a need for me to file a case before the SC seeking a review, I will gladly do it. I am therefore asking lawyers who may have read this column to share with me their opinion if I have the basis and the right to bring this to the SC as a consumer who is deprived of protection.

Again, let me pose these questions:

What if due to bad weather or an earthquake, a substandard glass panel from a building or a house was shattered and fell on people, in the process hurting, or worse killing, them? Whose fault is it going to be—the government’s, the courts’, the importer’s or manufacturer’s?
Should the families of the victims blame the state for reneging on its duty to protect them; the courts for issuing the restraining orders and letting them linger this long despite the exigency of the matter; or the manufacturer or seller of the substandard glass panel?

I believe that the quickest recourse to this is through the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, according to its own website, has the power to promulgate rules concerning the protection and enforcement of constitutional rights, pleading, practice, and procedure in all courts, the admission to the practice of law, the integrated bar, and legal assistance to the underprivileged.

The SC can, thus, promulgate a rule barring trial courts from issuing injunctions against product standards.

Since this is practically a constitutional matter, questions concerning the implementation of product standards should only be heard by the SC itself, or maybe by the Court of Appeals and appealable to the SC.

Probably another way is for a party to file a case before the SC.

But, again, due to the exigency of the matter, especially now that earthquakes and typhoons are getting more frequent and stronger, the SC should take matters into its own hands and issue a ruling that will prevent the issuance of TROs at the level of trial courts. Enjoin the enjoiners.

I defer to the wisdom of our esteemed SC Justices.