Court finds QC gov't liable for deadly Payatas garbage slide

Nearly 20 years since the collapse of a "mountain of garbage" killed hundreds of people in Payatas, a trial court has found the Quezon City government liable to the families of dozens of the victims to the tune of more than P6 million.

The Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 97, in its 133-page decision, ordered the local government to pay the legal heirs of 59 of the garbage slide's many casualties P110,000 for each victim.

The amount represents P50,000 in temperate damages, P50,000 in moral damages, and P10,000 in exemplary or corrective damages. The city government was also directed to pay P100,000 in attorney's fees.

No actual damages were awarded because the court said there was no evidence of the prior existence of their buried properties and the funeral expenses for the victims.

The court cleared the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, Tofemi Realty Corporation and Meteor Company, Inc., which owned the land used as the dumpsite; and Ren Transport, one of the haulers of garbage to Payatas.

The victims' families alleged that a "huge and strong inferno-like garbage avalanche" buried more than 300 people alive in the morning of July 10, 2000.

The dumpsite was near a relocation site in Lupang Pangako, Payatas. Though ordered closed by the national government in 1998, the site was eventually reopened despite complaints by the residents, the court said.

"The mountain-like trash in itself is a testament of the city government's gross negligence in the management and operation of the dumpsite," Acting Presiding Judge Marilou Runes-Tamang wrote in the October 30, 2019 ruling.

"Had they exercised due care expected of them, they could not have allowed  the garbage to rise to such unprecedented height as to resemble several Meralco posts arranged on top of each other or several storeys-high of a building."

The court held that the local government's failure to maintain an adequate solid waste disposal facility "caused damage to both life and property of the persons living in the area."

The city government had argued the residents "willingly and voluntarily assumed the risk by refusing to be relocated to safer places." But while the court found the residents did not evacuate at the onset of "raging typhoons," it held that blame still fell on the local government for allowing the garbage to rise so high.

The court noted that the garbage volume increased because Quezon City allowed the dumping of trash from other parts of Metro Manila.

"The conduct of the plaintiffs in choosing to stay near the dumpsite, albeit contributory negligence, was not sufficient to relieve the City Government of Quezon City of liability," the court said.

It said the dangerous condition of the dumpsite could have been avoided had the local government managed it in a way that would have minimized its "adverse effects." — MDM, GMA News