Gentlemen:

Quoted hereunder, for your information, is a resolution of this Court dated JUL 23 2003.

G.R. No. 148241 (Hantex Trading Co., Inc. vs. Court of Appeals and Bernardo Singson.)

On 1 July 2003 private respondent Bernardo Singson, prevailing party in the above-entitled case, filed a Manifestation with Motion for Clarification of the Decision bringing to this Court’s attention what appears to be “a discrepancy in the body and in the dispositive portion of the decision Un (in instant case),” with respect to the reckoning date in the computation of the award for back wages, which discrepancy was discovered only during the hearing for the execution of the judgment. The questioned Decision was promulgated on 27 September 2002. It became final and executory and accordingly recorded in the Book of Entries of Judgments on 29 October 2002.

A perusal of the Decision would show that the back wages should be computed from 5 August 1996, the date when private respondent was illegally dismissed, and not 5 August 2002 as erroneously indicated in its dispositive portion. That private respondent’s employment was illegally terminated by his employer on 5 August 1996 - and not 5 August 2002 - is likewise clear from an examination of the decisions of the Labor Arbiter, the NLRC and the court of Appeals.

Obviously, the year 2002 appearing in the dispositive portion of our Decision is purely a clerical oversight. What is being sought here is simply the correction of a typographical mistake or the clarification of an ambiguity, and this Court is not precluded from rectifying the inadvertence by substituting the year 1996 to the year 2002 in order to harmonize the fallo with the ratio decidendi of the decision.

A rule of long-standing and undeviating observance is that even if a decision has become final, clerical errors or mistakes and omissions plainly due to inadvertence may be corrected or supplied even after the judgment has been entered. The correction of a clerical error is an exception to the general rule that no amendment or correction may be made by the court in its judgment once it had become final. The court may make this amendment ex parte and, for this purpose, may resort to the pleadings of the parties, the court’s findings of facts and its conclusion of law as expressed in the body of the decision.[1]

WHEREFORE, the private respondent’s Manifestation with Motion for Clarification of the Decision is NOTED and GRANTED. Accordingly, the dispositive portion of the Decision of 27 September 2002 in the above-entitled case should be as it is hereby CORRECTED to read:

“WHEREFORE, the petition is DENIED and the assailed decision dated 23 October 2000 of the Court of Appeals is AFFIRMED. Petitioners Hantex Trading Co., Inc., and Mariano Chua are directed jointly and severally to pay respondent Bernardo Singson separation pay in lieu of reinstatement in the amount equivalent to one (1) month pay for every year of service, back wages computed from 5 August 1996, the time his compensation was withheld from him, up to the finality of this decision, plus the accrued 13th month pay.”

SO ORDERED.

Very truly yours,

(Sgd.) TOMASITA B. MAGAY-DRIS

Clerk of Court

[1] Vda. de Reyes v. Court of Appeals, et al., G.R. No. 47027, 27 January 1989, 169 SCRA 524.