November 7, 2008 DECISION

Issue: WON an employer-employee relation exists.

Ruling: YES. Tongko was an employee of Manulife. In the instant case, Manulife had the power of control over Tongko that would make him its employee. Several factors
contribute to this conclusion.

In the Agreement dated July 1, 1977 executed between Tongko and Manulife, it is provided that:

The Agent hereby agrees to comply with all regulations and requirements of the Company as herein provided as well as maintain a standard of knowledge and competency in
the sale of the Company's products which satisfies those set by the Company and sufficiently meets the volume of new business required of Production Club membership.21

Under this provision, an agent of Manulife must comply with three (3) requirements: (1) compliance with the regulations and requirements of the company; (2) maintenance of
a level of knowledge of the company's products that is satisfactory to the company; and (3) compliance with a quota of new businesses.

Among the company regulations of Manulife are the different codes of conduct such as the Agent Code of Conduct, Manulife Financial Code of Conduct, and Manulife Financial
Code of Conduct Agreement, which demonstrate the power of control exercised by the company over Tongko. The fact that Tongko was obliged to obey and comply with the
codes of conduct was not disowned by respondents.

Thus, with the company regulations and requirements alone, the fact that Tongko was an employee of Manulife may already be established. Certainly, these requirements
controlled the means and methods by which Tongko was to achieve the company's goals.

More importantly, Manulife's evidence establishes the fact that Tongko was tasked to perform administrative duties that establishes his employment with Manulife.

A comparison of the above functions and those contained in the Agreement with those cited in Great Pacific Life Assurance Corporation25 reveals a striking similarity that would
more than support a similar finding as in that case. Thus, there was an employer-employee relationship between the parties.

Additionally, it must be pointed out that the fact that Tongko was tasked with recruiting a certain number of agents, in addition to his other administrative functions, leads to no
other conclusion that he was an employee of Manulife.

In his letter dated November 6, 2001, De Dios harped on the direction of Manulife of becoming a major agency-led distribution company whereby greater agency recruitment is
required of the managers, including Tongko. De Dios made it clear that agent recruitment has become the primary means by which Manulife intends to sell more policies. More
importantly, it is Tongko's alleged failure to follow this principle of recruitment that led to the termination of his employment with Manulife. With this, it is inescapable that
Tongko was an employee of Manulife.
June 29, 2010 DECISION

Issue: WON an employer-employee relation exists.

Ruling: NO. A. The Insurance and the Civil Codes; the Parties’ Intent and Established Industry Practices

The court cannot consider the present case purely from a labor law perspective, oblivious that the factual antecedents were set in the insurance industry so that the Insurance
Code primarily governs. Chapter IV, Title 1 of this Code is wholly devoted to "Insurance Agents and Brokers" and specifically defines the agents and brokers relationship with the
insurance company and how they are governed by the Code and regulated by the Insurance Commission.

The Insurance Code, of course, does not wholly regulate the "agency" that it speaks of, as agency is a civil law matter governed by the Civil Code. Thus, at the very least, three
sets of laws – namely, the Insurance Code, the Labor Code and the Civil Code – have to be considered in looking at the present case. Not to be forgotten, too, is the Agreement
(partly reproduced on page 2 of this Dissent and which no one disputes) that the parties adopted to govern their relationship for purposes of selling the insurance the company
offers. To forget these other laws is to take a myopic view of the present case and to add to the uncertainties that now exist in considering the legal relationship between the
insurance company and its "agents."

The Labor Code concept of "control" has to be compared and distinguished with the "control" that must necessarily exist in a principal-agent relationship. The principal cannot
but also have his or her say in directing the course of the principal-agent relationship, especially in cases where the company-representative relationship in the insurance
industry is an agency.

a. The laws on insurance and agency

Under the Insurance Code, the agent must, as a matter of qualification, be licensed and must also act within the parameters of the authority granted under the license and
under the contract with the principal. Other than the need for a license, the agent is limited in the way he offers and negotiates for the sale of the company’s insurance
products, in his collection activities, and in the delivery of the insurance contract or policy. Rules regarding the desired results (e.g., the required volume to continue to qualify as
a company agent, rules to check on the parameters on the authority given to the agent, and rules to ensure that industry, legal and ethical rules are followed) are built-in
elements of control specific to an insurance agency and should not and cannot be read as elements of control that attend an employment relationship governed by the Labor
Code.

On the other hand, the Civil Code defines an agent as a "person [who] binds himself to render some service or to do something in representation or on behalf of another, with
the consent or authority of the latter." While this is a very broad definition that on its face may even encompass an employment relationship, the distinctions between agency
and employment are sufficiently established by law and jurisprudence.
Generally, the determinative element is the control exercised over the one rendering service. The employer controls the employee both in the results and in the means and
manner of achieving this result. The principal in an agency relationship, on the other hand, also has the prerogative to exercise control over the agent in undertaking the
assigned task based on the parameters outlined in the pertinent laws.

Under the general law on agency as applied to insurance, an agency must be express in light of the need for a license and for the designation by the insurance company. In the
present case, the Agreement fully serves as grant of authority to Tongko as Manulife’s insurance agent. This agreement is supplemented by the company’s agency practices and
usages, duly accepted by the agent in carrying out the agency. By authority of the Insurance Code, an insurance agency is for compensation,a matter the Civil Code Rules on
Agency presumes in the absence of proof to the contrary. Other than the compensation, the principal is bound to advance to, or to reimburse, the agent the agreed sums
necessary for the execution of the agency. By implication at least under Article 1994 of the Civil Code, the principal can appoint two or more agents to carry out the same
assigned tasks, based necessarily on the specific instructions and directives given to them.

With particular relevance to the present case is the provision that "In the execution of the agency, the agent shall act in accordance with the instructions of the principal." This
provision is pertinent for purposes of the necessary control that the principal exercises over the agent in undertaking the assigned task, and is an area where the instructions can
intrude into the labor law concept of control so that minute consideration of the facts is necessary. A related article is Article 1891 of the Civil Code which binds the agent to
render an account of his transactions to the principal.

B. The Cited Case

The Decision of November 7, 2008 refers to the first Insular and Grepalife cases to establish that the company rules and regulations that an agent has to comply with are
indicative of an employer-employee relationship. The Dissenting Opinions of Justice Presbitero Velasco, Jr. and Justice Conchita Carpio Morales also cite Insular Life Assurance
Co. v. National Labor Relations Commission (second Insular case) to support the view that Tongko is Manulife’s employee. On the other hand, Manulife cites the Carungcong
case and AFP Mutual Benefit Association, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Commission (AFPMBAI case) to support its allegation that Tongko was not its employee.

A caveat has been given above with respect to the use of the rulings in the cited cases because none of them is on all fours with the present case; the uniqueness of the factual
situation of the present case prevents it from being directly and readily cast in the mold of the cited cases. These cited cases are themselves different from one another; this
difference underscores the need to read and quote them in the context of their own factual situations.

The present case at first glance appears aligned with the facts in the Carungcong, the Grepalife, and the second Insular Life cases. A critical difference, however, exists as these
cited cases dealt with the proper legal characterization of a subsequent management contract that superseded the original agency contract between the insurance company and
its agent. Carungcong dealt with a subsequent Agreement making Carungcong a New Business Manager that clearly superseded the Agreement designating Carungcong as an
agent empowered to solicit applications for insurance. The Grepalife case, on the other hand, dealt with the proper legal characterization of the appointment of the Ruiz
brothers to positions higher than their original position as insurance agents. Thus, after analyzing the duties and functions of the Ruiz brothers, as these were enumerated in
their contracts, we concluded that the company practically dictated the manner by which the Ruiz brothers were to carry out their jobs. Finally, the second Insular Life case dealt
with the implications of de los Reyes’ appointment as acting unit manager which, like the subsequent contracts in the Carungcong and the Grepalife cases, was clearly defined
under a subsequent contract. In all these cited cases, a determination of the presence of the Labor Code element of control was made on the basis of the stipulations of the
subsequent contracts.

In stark contrast with the Carungcong, the Grepalife, and the second Insular Life cases, the only contract or document extant and submitted as evidence in the present case is
the Agreement – a pure agency agreement in the Civil Code context similar to the original contract in the first Insular Life case and the contract in the AFPMBAI case. And while
Tongko was later on designated unit manager in 1983, Branch Manager in 1990, and Regional Sales Manager in 1996, no formal contract regarding these undertakings appears
in the records of the case. Any such contract or agreement, had there been any, could have at the very least provided the bases for properly ascertaining the juridical
relationship established between the parties.

These critical differences, particularly between the present case and the Grepalife and the second Insular Life cases, should therefore immediately drive us to be more prudent
and cautious in applying the rulings in these cases.

C. Analysis of the Evidence

c.1. The Agreement

The primary evidence in the present case is the July 1, 1977 Agreement that governed and defined the parties’ relations until the Agreement’s termination in 2001. This
Agreement stood for more than two decades and, based on the records of the case, was never modified or novated. It assumes primacy because it directly dealt with the nature
of the parties’ relationship up to the very end; moreover, both parties never disputed its authenticity or the accuracy of its terms.

By the Agreement’s express terms, Tongko served as an "insurance agent" for Manulife, not as an employee. To be sure, the Agreement’s legal characterization of the nature of
the relationship cannot be conclusive and binding on the courts; as the dissent clearly stated, the characterization of the juridical relationship the Agreement embodied is a
matter of law that is for the courts to determine. At the same time, though, the characterization the parties gave to their relationship in the Agreement cannot simply be
brushed aside because it embodies their intent at the time they entered the Agreement, and they were governed by this understanding throughout their relationship. At the
very least, the provision on the absence of employer-employee relationship between the parties can be an aid in considering the Agreement and its implementation, and in
appreciating the other evidence on record.

The parties’ legal characterization of their intent, although not conclusive, is critical in this case because this intent is not illegal or outside the contemplation of law, particularly
of the Insurance and the Civil Codes. From this perspective, the provisions of the Insurance Code cannot be disregarded as this Code (as heretofore already noted) expressly
envisions a principal-agent relationship between the insurance company and the insurance agent in the sale of insurance to the public. 1awph!1 For this reason, we can take
judicial notice that as a matter of Insurance Code-based business practice, an agency relationship prevails in the insurance industry for the purpose of selling insurance. The
Agreement, by its express terms, is in accordance with the Insurance Code model when it provided for a principal-agent relationship, and thus cannot lightly be set aside nor
simply be considered as an agreement that does not reflect the parties’ true intent. This intent, incidentally, is reinforced by the system of compensation the Agreement
provides, which likewise is in accordance with the production-based sales commissions the Insurance Code provides.
Significantly, evidence shows that Tongko’s role as an insurance agent never changed during his relationship with Manulife. If changes occurred at all, the changes did not
appear to be in the nature of their core relationship. Tongko essentially remained an agent, but moved up in this role through Manulife’s recognition that he could use other
agents approved by Manulife, but operating under his guidance and in whose commissions he had a share. For want of a better term, Tongko perhaps could be labeled as a "lead
agent" who guided under his wing other Manulife agents similarly tasked with the selling of Manulife insurance.

Like Tongko, the evidence suggests that these other agents operated under their own agency agreements. Thus, if Tongko’s compensation scheme changed at all during his
relationship with Manulife, the change was solely for purposes of crediting him with his share in the commissions the agents under his wing generated. As an agent who was
recruiting and guiding other insurance agents, Tongko likewise moved up in terms of the reimbursement of expenses he incurred in the course of his lead agency, a prerogative
he enjoyed pursuant to Article 1912 of the Civil Code. Thus, Tongko received greater reimbursements for his expenses and was even allowed to use Manulife facilities in his
interactions with the agents, all of whom were, in the strict sense, Manulife agents approved and certified as such by Manulife with the Insurance Commission.

That Tongko assumed a leadership role but nevertheless wholly remained an agent is the inevitable conclusion that results from the reading of the Agreement (the only
agreement on record in this case) and his continuing role thereunder as sales agent, from the perspective of the Insurance and the Civil Codes and in light of what Tongko
himself attested to as his role as Regional Sales Manager. To be sure, this interpretation could have been contradicted if other agreements had been submitted as evidence of
the relationship between Manulife and Tongko on the latter’s expanded undertakings. In the absence of any such evidence, however, this reading – based on the available
evidence and the applicable insurance and civil law provisions – must stand, subject only to objective and evidentiary Labor Code tests on the existence of an employer-
employee relationship.

In applying such Labor Code tests, however, the enforcement of the Agreement during the course of the parties’ relationship should be noted. From 1977 until the termination
of the Agreement, Tongko’s occupation was to sell Manulife’s insurance policies and products. Both parties acquiesced with the terms and conditions of the Agreement. Tongko,
for his part, accepted all the benefits flowing from the Agreement, particularly the generous commissions.

Evidence indicates that Tongko consistently clung to the view that he was an independent agent selling Manulife insurance products since he invariably declared himself a
business or self-employed person in his income tax returns. This consistency with, and action made pursuant to the Agreement were pieces of evidence that were never
mentioned nor considered in our Decision of November 7, 2008. Had they been considered, they could, at the very least, serve as Tongko’s admissions against his interest.
Strictly speaking, Tongko’s tax returns cannot but be legally significant because he certified under oath the amount he earned as gross business income, claimed business
deductions, leading to his net taxable income. This should be evidence of the first order that cannot be brushed aside by a mere denial. Even on a layman’s view that is devoid of
legal considerations, the extent of his annual income alone renders his claimed employment status doubtful.

Hand in hand with the concept of admission against interest in considering the tax returns, the concept of estoppel – a legal and equitable concept – necessarily must come into
play. Tongko’s previous admissions in several years of tax returns as an independent agent, as against his belated claim that he was all along an employee, are too diametrically
opposed to be simply dismissed or ignored. Interestingly, Justice Velasco’s dissenting opinion states that Tongko was forced to declare himself a business or self-employed
person by Manulife’s persistent refusal to recognize him as its employee. Regrettably, the dissent has shown no basis for this conclusion, an understandable omission since no
evidence in fact exists on this point in the records of the case. In fact, what the evidence shows is Tongko’s full conformity with, and action as, an independent agent until his
relationship with Manulife took a bad turn.

Another interesting point the dissent raised with respect to the Agreement is its conclusion that the Agreement negated any employment relationship between Tongko and
Manulife so that the commissions he earned as a sales agent should not be considered in the determination of the backwages and separation pay that should be given to him.
This part of the dissent is correct although it went on to twist this conclusion by asserting that Tongko had dual roles in his relationship with Manulife; he was an agent, not an
employee, in so far as he sold insurance for Manulife, but was an employee in his capacity as a manager. Thus, the dissent concluded that Tongko’s backwages should only be
with respect to his role as Manulife’s manager.

The conclusion with respect to Tongko’s employment as a manager is, of course, unacceptable for the legal, factual and practical reasons discussed in this Resolution. In brief,
the factual reason is grounded on the lack of evidentiary support of the conclusion that Manulife exercised control over Tongko in the sense understood in the Labor Code.
The legal reason, partly based on the lack of factual basis, is the erroneous legal conclusion that Manulife controlled Tongko and was thus its employee. The  practical reason, on
the other hand, is the havoc that the dissent’s unwarranted conclusion would cause the insurance industry that, by the law’s own design, operated along the lines of principal-
agent relationship in the sale of insurance.

c.2. Other Evidence of Alleged Control

A glaring evidentiary gap for Tongko in this case is the lack of evidence on record showing that Manulife ever exercised means-and-manner control, even to a limited extent,
over Tongko during his ascent in Manulife’s sales ladder. In 1983, Tongko was appointed unit manager. Inexplicably, Tongko never bothered to present any evidence at all on
what this designation meant. This also holds true for Tongko’s appointment as branch manager in 1990, and as Regional Sales Manager in 1996. The best evidence of control –
the agreement or directive relating to Tongko’s duties and responsibilities – was never introduced as part of the records of the case. The reality is, prior to de Dios’ letter,
Manulife had practically left Tongko alone not only in doing the business of selling insurance, but also in guiding the agents under his wing. As discussed below, the alleged
directives covered by de Dios’ letter, heretofore quoted in full, were policy directions and targeted results that the company wanted Tongko and the other sales groups to realign
with in their own selling activities. This is the reality that the parties’ presented evidence consistently tells us.

What, to Tongko, serve as evidence of labor law control are the codes of conduct that Manulife imposes on its agents in the sale of insurance. The mere presentation of codes or
of rules and regulations, however, is not per se indicative of labor law control as the law and jurisprudence teach us.

As already recited above, the Insurance Code imposes obligations on both the insurance company and its agents in the performance of their respective obligations under the
Code, particularly on licenses and their renewals, on the representations to be made to potential customers, the collection of premiums, on the delivery of insurance policies, on
the matter of compensation, and on measures to ensure ethical business practice in the industry.

The general law on agency, on the other hand, expressly allows the principal an element of control over the agent in a manner consistent with an agency relationship. In this
sense, these control measures cannot be read as indicative of labor law control. Foremost among these are the directives that the principal may impose on the agent to achieve
the assigned tasks, to the extent that they do not involve the means and manner of undertaking these tasks. The law likewise obligates the agent to render an account; in this
sense, the principal may impose on the agent specific instructions on how an account shall be made, particularly on the matter of expenses and reimbursements. To these
extents, control can be imposed through rules and regulations without intruding into the labor law concept of control for purposes of employment.

From jurisprudence, an important lesson that the first Insular Life case teaches us is that a commitment to abide by the rules and regulations of an insurance company does not
ipso facto make the insurance agent an employee. Neither do guidelines somehow restrictive of the insurance agent’s conduct necessarily indicate "control" as this term is
defined in jurisprudence. Guidelines indicative of labor law "control," as the first Insular Life case tells us, should not merely relate to the mutually desirable result intended
by the contractual relationship; they must have the nature of dictating the means or methods to be employed in attaining the result, or of fixing the methodology and of
binding or restricting the party hired to the use of these means. In fact, results-wise, the principal can impose production quotas and can determine how many agents, with
specific territories, ought to be employed to achieve the company’s objectives. These are management policy decisions that the labor law element of control cannot reach. Our
ruling in these respects in the first Insular Life case was practically reiterated in Carungcong. Thus, as will be shown more fully below, Manulife’s codes of conduct, all of which do
not intrude into the insurance agents’ means and manner of conducting their sales and only control them as to the desired results and Insurance Code norms, cannot be used as
basis for a finding that the labor law concept of control existed between Manulife and Tongko.

The dissent considers the imposition of administrative and managerial functions on Tongko as indicative of labor law control; thus, Tongko as manager, but not as insurance
agent, became Manulife’s employee. It drew this conclusion from what the other Manulife managers disclosed in their affidavits (i.e., their enumerated administrative and
managerial functions) and after comparing these statements with the managers in Grepalife. The dissent compared the control exercised by Manulife over its managers in the
present case with the control the managers in the Grepalife case exercised over their employees by presenting the following matrix:

Duties of Manulife’s Manager

- to render or recommend prospective agents

to be licensed, trained and contracted to sell
Manulife products and who will be part of my
Unit
- to coordinate activities of the agents under
[the managers’] Unit in [the agents’] daily,
weekly and monthly selling activities, making
sure that their respective sales targets are
met;

- to conduct periodic training sessions for

[the] agents to further enhance their sales
skill; and

- to assist [the] agents with their sales

activities by way of joint fieldwork,
consultations and one-on-one evaluation and
analysis of particular accounts
Duties of Grepalife’s Managers/Supervisors
- train understudies for the position of district
manager
- properly account, record and document the
company’s funds, spot-check and audit the work
of the zone supervisors, x x x follow up the
submission of weekly remittance reports of the
debit agents and zone supervisors

- direct and supervise the sales activities of the

debit agents under him, x x x undertake and
discharge the functions of absentee debit agents,
spot-check the record of debit agents, and insure
proper documentation of sales and collections of
debit agents.

Aside from these affidavits however, no other evidence exists regarding the effects of Tongko’s additional roles in Manulife’s sales operations on the contractual relationship
between them.

To the dissent, Tongko’s administrative functions as recruiter, trainer, or supervisor of other sales agents constituted a substantive alteration of Manulife’s authority over Tongko
and the performance of his end of the relationship with Manulife. We could not deny though that Tongko remained, first and foremost, an insurance agent, and that his
additional role as Branch Manager did not lessen his main and dominant role as insurance agent; this role continued to dominate the relations between Tongko and Manulife
even after Tongko assumed his leadership role among agents. This conclusion cannot be denied because it proceeds from the undisputed fact that Tongko and Manulife never
altered their July 1, 1977 Agreement, a distinction the present case has with the contractual changes made in the second Insular Life case. Tongko’s results-based commissions,
too, attest to the primacy he gave to his role as insurance sales agent.

The dissent apparently did not also properly analyze and appreciate the great qualitative difference that exists between:

 the Manulife managers’ role is to coordinate activities of the agents under the managers’ Unit in the agents’ daily, weekly, and monthly selling activities, making sure
that their respective sales targets are met.
 the District Manager’s duty in Grepalife is to properly account, record, and document the company's funds, spot-check and audit the work of the zone supervisors,
conserve the company's business in the district through "reinstatements," follow up the submission of weekly remittance reports of the debit agents and zone
supervisors, preserve company property in good condition, train understudies for the position of district managers, and maintain his quota of sales (the failure of which
is a ground for termination).
 the  Zone Supervisor’s (also in Grepalife)  has the duty to direct and supervise the sales activities of the debit agents under him, conserve company property through
"reinstatements," undertake and discharge the functions of absentee debit agents, spot-check the records of debit agents, and insure proper documentation of sales and
collections by the debit agents.

These job contents are worlds apart in terms of "control." In Grepalife, the details of how to do the job are specified and pre-determined; in the present case, the operative
words are the "sales target," the methodology being left undefined except to the extent of being "coordinative." To be sure, a "coordinative" standard for a manager cannot be
indicative of control; the standard only essentially describes what a Branch Manager is – the person in the lead who orchestrates activities within the group. To "coordinate,"
and thereby to lead and to orchestrate, is not so much a matter of control by Manulife; it is simply a statement of a branch manager’s role in relation with his agents from the
point of view of Manulife whose business Tongko’s sales group carries.

A disturbing note, with respect to the presented affidavits and Tongko’s alleged administrative functions, is the selective citation of the portions supportive of an employment
relationship and the consequent omission of portions leading to the contrary conclusion. For example, the following portions of the affidavit of Regional Sales Manager John
Chua, with counterparts in the other affidavits, were not brought out in the Decision of November 7, 2008, while the other portions suggesting labor law control were
highlighted. Specifically, the following portions of the affidavits were not brought out: 32

1.a. I have no fixed wages or salary since my services are compensated by way of commissions based on the computed premiums paid in full on the policies obtained
thereat;

1.b. I have no fixed working hours and employ my own method in soliticing insurance at a time and place I see fit;
 1.c. I have my own assistant and messenger who handle my daily work load;

1.d. I use my own facilities, tools, materials and supplies in carrying out my business of selling insurance;

xxxx

6. I have my own staff that handles the day to day operations of my office;

7. My staff are my own employees and received salaries from me;

xxxx

9. My commission and incentives are all reported to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as income by a self-employed individual or professional with a ten (10) percent
creditable withholding tax. I also remit monthly for professionals.

These statements, read with the above comparative analysis of the Manulife and the Grepalife cases, would have readily yielded the conclusion that no employer-employee
relationship existed between Manulife and Tongko.

Even de Dios’ letter is not determinative of control as it indicates the least amount of intrusion into Tongko’s exercise of his role as manager in guiding the sales agents. Strictly
viewed, de Dios’ directives are merely operational guidelines on how Tongko could align his operations with Manulife’s re-directed goal of being a "big league player." The
method is to expand coverage through the use of more agents. This requirement for the recruitment of more agents is not a means-and-method control as it relates, more than
anything else, and is directly relevant, to Manulife’s objective of expanded business operations through the use of a bigger sales force whose members are all on a principal-
agent relationship. An important point to note here is that Tongko was not supervising regular full-time employees of Manulife engaged in the running of the insurance business;
Tongko was effectively guiding his corps of sales agents, who are bound to Manulife through the same Agreement that he had with Manulife, all the while sharing in these
agents’ commissions through his overrides. This is the lead agent concept mentioned above for want of a more appropriate term, since the title of Branch Manager used by the
parties is really a misnomer given that what is involved is not a specific regular branch of the company but a corps of non-employed agents, defined in terms of covered
territory, through which the company sells insurance. Still another point to consider is that Tongko was not even setting policies in the way a regular company manager does;
company aims and objectives were simply relayed to him with suggestions on how these objectives can be reached through the expansion of a non-employee sales force.

Interestingly, a large part of de Dios’ letter focused on income, which Manulife demonstrated, in Tongko’s case, to be unaffected by the new goal and direction the company had
set. Income in insurance agency, of course, is dependent on results, not on the means and manner of selling – a matter for Tongko and his agents to determine and an area into
which Manulife had not waded. Undeniably, de Dios’ letter contained a directive to secure a competent assistant at Tongko’s own expense. While couched in terms of a
directive, it cannot strictly be understood as an intrusion into Tongko’s method of operating and supervising the group of agents within his delineated territory. More than
anything else, the "directive" was a signal to Tongko that his results were unsatisfactory, and was a suggestion on how Tongko’s perceived weakness in delivering results could
be remedied. It was a solution, with an eye on results, for a consistently underperforming group; its obvious intent was to save Tongko from the result that he then failed to
grasp – that he could lose even his own status as an agent, as he in fact eventually did.

The present case must be distinguished from the second Insular Life case that showed the hallmarks of an employer-employee relationship in the management system
established. These were: exclusivity of service, control of assignments and removal of agents under the private respondent’s unit, and furnishing of company facilities and
materials as well as capital described as Unit Development Fund. All these are obviously absent in the present case. If there is a commonality in these cases, it is in the collection
of premiums which is a basic authority that can be delegated to agents under the Insurance Code.

As previously discussed, what simply happened in Tongko’s case was the grant of an expanded sales agency role that recognized him as leader amongst agents in an area that
Manulife defined. Whether this consequently resulted in the establishment of an employment relationship can be answered by concrete evidence that corresponds to the
following questions:

 as lead agent, what were Tongko’s specific functions and the terms of his additional engagement;
 was he paid additional compensation as a so-called Area Sales Manager, apart from the commissions he received from the insurance sales he generated;
 what can be Manulife’s basis to terminate his status as lead agent;
 can Manulife terminate his role as lead agent separately from his agency contract; and
 to what extent does Manulife control the means and methods of Tongko’s role as lead agent?

The answers to these questions may, to some extent, be deduced from the evidence at hand, as partly discussed above. But strictly speaking, the questions cannot definitively
and concretely be answered through the evidence on record. The concrete evidence required to settle these questions is simply not there, since only the Agreement and the
anecdotal affidavits have been marked and submitted as evidence.

Given this anemic state of the evidence, particularly on the requisite confluence of the factors determinative of the existence of employer-employee relationship, the Court
cannot conclusively find that the relationship exists in the present case, even if such relationship only refers to Tongko’s additional functions. While a rough deduction can be
made, the answer will not be fully supported by the substantial evidence needed.
Under this legal situation, the only conclusion that can be made is that the absence of evidence showing Manulife’s control over Tongko’s contractual duties points to the
absence of any employer-employee relationship between Tongko and Manulife. In the context of the established evidence, Tongko remained an agent all along; although his
subsequent duties made him a lead agent with leadership role, he was nevertheless only an agent whose basic contract yields no evidence of means-and-manner control.

This conclusion renders unnecessary any further discussion of the question of whether an agent may simultaneously assume conflicting dual personalities. But to set the record
straight, the concept of a single person having the dual role of agent and employee while doing the same task is a novel one in our jurisprudence, which must be viewed with
caution especially when it is devoid of any jurisprudential support or precedent. The quoted portions in Justice Carpio-Morales’ dissent, 33 borrowed from both the Grepalife
and the second Insular Life cases, to support the duality approach of the Decision of November 7, 2008, are regrettably far removed from their context – i.e., the cases’ factual
situations, the issues they decided and the totality of the rulings in these cases – and cannot yield the conclusions that the dissenting opinions drew.

The Grepalife case dealt with the sole issue of whether the Ruiz brothers’ appointment as zone supervisor and district manager made them employees of  Grepalife. Indeed,
because of the presence of the element of control in their contract of engagements, they were considered Grepalife’s employees. This did not mean, however, that they were
simultaneously considered agents as well as employees of Grepalife; the Court’s ruling never implied that this situation existed insofar as the Ruiz brothers were concerned. The
Court’s statement – the Insurance Code may govern the licensing requirements and other particular duties of insurance agents, but it does not bar the application of the Labor
Code with regard to labor standards and labor relations – simply means that when an insurance company has exercised control over its agents so as to make them their
employees, the relationship between the parties, which was otherwise one for agency governed by the Civil Code and the Insurance Code, will now be governed by the Labor
Code. The reason for this is simple – the contract of agency has been transformed into an employer-employee relationship.

The second Insular Life case, on the other hand, involved the issue of whether the labor bodies have jurisdiction over an illegal termination dispute involving parties who had
two contracts – first, an original contract (agency contract), which was undoubtedly one for agency, and another subsequent contract that in turn designated the agent acting
unit manager (a management contract). Both the Insular Life and the labor arbiter were one in the position that both were agency contracts. The Court disagreed with this
conclusion and held that insofar as the management contract is concerned, the labor arbiter has jurisdiction. It is in this light that we remanded the case to the labor arbiter for
further proceedings. We never said in this case though that the insurance agent had effectively assumed dual personalities for the simple reason that the agency contract has
been effectively superseded by the management contract. The management contract provided that if the appointment was terminated for any reason other than for cause, the
acting unit manager would be reverted to agent status and assigned to any unit.

The dissent pointed out, as an argument to support its employment relationship conclusion, that any doubt in the existence of an employer-employee relationship should be
resolved in favor of the existence of the relationship. 34 This observation, apparently drawn from Article 4 of the Labor Code, is misplaced, as Article 4 applies only when a doubt
exists in the "implementation and application" of the Labor Code and its implementing rules; it does not apply where no doubt exists as in a situation where the claimant clearly
failed to substantiate his claim of employment relationship by the quantum of evidence the Labor Code requires.
On the dissent’s last point regarding the lack of jurisprudential value of our November 7, 2008 Decision, suffice it to state that, as discussed above, the Decision was not
supported by the evidence adduced and was not in accordance with controlling jurisprudence. It should, therefore, be reconsidered and abandoned, but not in the manner the
dissent suggests as the dissenting opinions are as factually and as legally erroneous as the Decision under reconsideration.

In light of these conclusions, the sufficiency of Tongko’s failure to comply with the guidelines of de Dios’ letter, as a ground for termination of Tongko’s agency, is a matter that
the labor tribunals cannot rule upon in the absence of an employer-employee relationship. Jurisdiction over the matter belongs to the courts applying the laws of insurance,
agency and contracts.

January 25, 2011 DECISION

Issues: WON an employer-employee relationship exists.

Ruling: NO.

Labor Law Control = Employment Relationship

Control over the performance of the task of one providing service – both with respect to the means and manner, and the results of the service – is the primary element in
determining whether an employment relationship exists. We resolve the petitioner’s Motion against his favor since he failed to show that the control Manulife exercised over
him was the control required to exist in an employer-employee relationship; Manulife’s control fell short of this norm and carried only the characteristic of the relationship
between an insurance company and its agents, as defined by the Insurance Code and by the law of agency under the Civil Code.

The petitioner asserts in his Motion that Manulife’s labor law control over him was demonstrated (1) when it set the objectives and sales targets regarding production,
recruitment and training programs; and (2) when it prescribed the Code of Conduct for Agents and the Manulife Financial Code of Conduct to govern his activities.  We find no
merit in these contentions.

In our June 29, 2010 Resolution, we noted that there are built-in elements of control specific to an insurance agency, which do not amount to the elements of control that
characterize an employment relationship governed by the Labor Code. The Insurance Code provides definite parameters in the way an agent negotiates for the sale of the
company’s insurance products, his collection activities and his delivery of the insurance contract or policy. In addition, the Civil Code defines an agent as a person who binds
himself to do something in behalf of another, with the consent or authority of the latter. Article 1887 of the Civil Code also provides that in the execution of the agency, the
agent shall act in accordance with the instructions of the principal.

All these, read without any clear understanding of fine legal distinctions, appear to speak of control by the insurance company over its agents. They are, however, controls aimed
only at specific results in undertaking an insurance agency, and are, in fact, parameters set by law in defining an insurance agency and the attendant duties and responsibilities
an insurance agent must observe and undertake. They do not reach the level of control into the means and manner of doing an assigned task that invariably characterizes an
employment relationship as defined by labor law. From this perspective, the petitioner’s contentions cannot prevail.

To reiterate, guidelines indicative of labor law "control" do not merely relate to the mutually desirable result intended by the contractual relationship; they must have the nature
of dictating the means and methods to be employed in attaining the result. 8 Tested by this norm, Manulife’s instructions regarding the objectives and sales targets, in connection
with the training and engagement of other agents, are among the directives that the principal may impose on the agent to achieve the assigned tasks. They are targeted results
that Manulife wishes to attain through its agents. Manulife’s codes of conduct, likewise, do not necessarily intrude into the insurance agents’ means and manner of conducting
their sales. Codes of conduct are norms or standards of behavior rather than employer directives into how specific tasks are to be done. These codes, as well as insurance
industry rules and regulations, are not per se indicative of labor law control under our jurisprudence. 9

The duties that the petitioner enumerated in his Motion are not supported by evidence and, therefore, deserve scant consideration. Even assuming their existence, however,
they mostly pertain to the duties of an insurance agent such as remitting insurance fees to Manulife, delivering policies to the insured, and after-sale services. For agents leading
other agents, these include the task of overseeing other insurance agents, the recruitment of other insurance agents engaged by Manulife as principal, and ensuring that these
other agents comply with the paperwork necessary in selling insurance. That Manulife exercises the power to assign and remove agents under the petitioner’s supervision is in
keeping with its role as a principal in an agency relationship; they are Manulife agents in the same manner that the petitioner had all along been a Manulife agent.

The petitioner also questions Manulife’s act of investing him with different titles and positions in the course of their relationship, given the respondents’ position that he simply
functioned as an insurance agent. He also considers it an unjust and inequitable situation that he would be unrewarded for the years he spent as a unit manager, a branch
manager, and a regional sales manager.

Based on the evidence on record, the petitioner’s occupation was to sell Manulife’s insurance policies and products from 1977 until the termination of the Career Agent’s
Agreement (Agreement). The evidence also shows that through the years, Manulife permitted him to exercise guiding authority over other agents who operate under their own
agency agreements with Manulife and whose commissions he shared. Under this scheme – an arrangement that pervades the insurance industry – petitioner in effect became a
"lead agent" and his own commissions increased as they included his share in the commissions of the other agents; he also received greater reimbursements for expenses and
was allowed to use Manulife’s facilities. His designation also changed from unit manager to branch manager and then to regional sales manager, to reflect the increase in the
number of agents he recruited and guided, as well as the increase in the area where these agents operated.

As our assailed Resolution concluded and as we now similarly conclude, these arrangements, and the titles and positions the petitioner was invested with, did not change his
status from the insurance agent that he had always been (as evidenced by the Agreement that governed his relationship with Manulife from the start to its disagreeable end).
The petitioner simply progressed from his individual agency to being a lead agent who could use other agents in selling insurance and share in the earnings of these other
agents.

In sum, we find absolutely no evidence of labor law control, as extensively discussed in our Resolution of June 29, 2010, granting Manulife’s motion for reconsideration. The
Dissent, unfortunately, misses this point.
B. No Resulting Inequity

We also do not agree that our assailed Resolution has the effect of fostering an inequitable or unjust situation. The records show that the petitioner was very amply paid for his
services as an insurance agent, who also shared in the commissions of the other agents under his guidance. In 1997, his income was ₱2,822,620; in 1998, ₱4,805,166.34; in 1999,
₱6,797,814.05; in 2001, ₱6,214,737.11; and in 2002, ₱8,003,180.38. All these he earned as an insurance agent, as he failed to ever prove that he earned these sums as an
employee. In technical terms, he could not have earned all these as an employee because he failed to provide the substantial evidence required in administrative cases to
support the finding that he was a Manulife employee. No inequity results under this legal situation; what would be unjust is an award of backwages and separation pay –
amounts that are not due him because he was never an employee.

The Dissent’s discussion on this aspect of the case begins with the wide disparity in the status of the parties – that Manulife is a big Canadian insurance company while Tongko is
but a single agent of Manulife. The Dissent then went on to say that "[i]f is but just, it is but right, that the Court interprets the relationship between Tongko and Manulife as one
of employment under labor laws and to uphold his constitutionally protected right, as an employee, to security of tenure and entitlement to monetary award should such right
be infringed." We cannot simply invoke the magical formula by creating an employment relationship even when there is none because of the unavoidable and inherently weak
position of an individual over a giant corporation.

The Dissent likewise alluded to an ambiguity in the true relationship of the parties after Tongko’s successive appointments. We already pointed out that the legal significance of
these appointments had not been sufficiently explained and that it did not help that Tongko never bothered to present evidence on this point. The Dissent recognized this but
tried to excuse Tongko from this failure in the subsequent discussion, as follows:

[o]ther evidence was adduced to show such duties and responsibilities. For one, in his letter of November 6, 2001, respondent De Dios addressed petitioner as sales manager.
And as I wrote in my Dissent to the June 29, 2010 Resolution, it is difficult to imagine that Manulife did not issue promotional appointments to petitioner as unit manager,
branch manager, and, eventually, regional sales manager. Sound management practice simply requires an appointment for any upward personnel movement, particularly when
additional functions and the corresponding increase in compensation are involved. Then, too, the adverted affidavits of the managers of Manulife as to the duties and
responsibilities of a unit manager, such as petitioner, point to the conclusion that these managers were employees of Manulife, applying the "four-fold" test. 16

This Court (and all adjudicators for that matter) cannot and should not fill in the evidentiary gaps in a party’s case that the party failed to support; we cannot and should not take
the cudgels for any party. Tongko failed to support his cause and we should simply view him and his case as they are; our duty is to sit as a judge in the case that he and the
respondent presented.

To support its arguments on equity, the Dissent uses the Constitution and the Civil Code, using provisions and principles that are all motherhood statements. The mandate of the
Court, of course, is to decide cases based on the facts and the law, and not to base its conclusions on fundamental precepts that are far removed from the particular case
presented before it. When there is no room for their application, of capacity of principles, reliance on the application of these fundamental principles is misplaced.

C. Earnings were Commissions

That his earnings were agent’s commissions arising from his work as an insurance agent is a matter that the petitioner cannot deny, as these are the declarations and
representations he stated in his income tax returns through the years. It would be doubly unjust, particularly to the government, if he would be allowed at this late point to turn
around and successfully claim that he was merely an employee after he declared himself, through the years, as an independent self-employed insurance agent with the privilege
of deducting business expenses. This aspect of the case alone – considered together with the probative value of income tax declarations and returns filed prior to the present
controversy — should be enough to clinch the present case against the petitioner’s favor.

D. The Dissent’s Solution:

Unwieldy and Legally Infirm

The Dissent proposes that Tongko should be considered as part employee (as manager) and part insurance agent; hence, the original decision should be modified to pertain only
to the termination of his employment as a manager and not as an insurance agent. Accordingly, the backwages component of the original award to him should not include the
insurance sales commissions. This solution, according to the line taken by the Dissent then, was justified on the view that this was made on a case-to-case basis.

Decisions of the Supreme Court, as the Civil Code provides, form part of the law of the land. When the Court states that the determination of the existence of an employment
relationship should be on a case-to-case basis, this does not mean that there will be as many laws on the issue as there are cases. In the context of this case, the four-fold test is
the established standard for determining employer-employee relationship and the existence of these elements, most notably control, is the basis upon which a conclusion on
the absence of employment relationship was anchored. This simply means that a conclusion on whether employment relationship exists in a particular case largely depends on
the facts and, in no small measure, on the parties’ evidence vis-à-vis the clearly defined jurisprudential standards. Given that the parties control what and how the facts will be
established in a particular case and/or how a particular suit is to be litigated, deciding the issues on a case-to-case basis becomes an imperative.

Another legal reality, a more important one, is that the duty of a court is to say what the law is. This is the same duty of the Supreme Court that underlies the stare decisis
principle. This is how the public, in general and the insurance industry in particular, views the role of this Court and courts in general in deciding cases. The lower courts and the
bar, most specially, look up to the rulings of this Court for guidance. Unless extremely unavoidable, the Court must, as a matter of sound judicial policy, resist the temptation of
branding its ruling pro hac vice.

The compromise solution of declaring Tongko both an employee and an agent is legally unrealistic, unwieldy and is, in fact, legally infirm, as it goes against the above basic
principles of judicial operation. Likewise, it does not and cannot realistically solve the problem/issue in this case; it actually leaves more questions than answers.

As already pointed out, there is no legal basis (be it statutory or jurisprudential) for the part-employee/part-insurance agent status under an essentially principal-agent
contractual relation which the Dissent proposes to accord to Tongko. If the Dissent intends to establish one, this is highly objectionable for this would amount to judicial
legislation. A legal relationship, be it one of employment or one based on a contract other than employment, exists as a matter of law pursuant to the facts, incidents and legal
consequences of the relationship; it cannot exist devoid of these legally defined underlying facts and legal consequences unless the law itself creates the relationship – an act
that is beyond the authority of this Court to do.
Additionally, the Dissent’s conclusion completely ignores an unavoidable legal reality – that the parties are bound by a contract of agency that clearly subsists notwithstanding
the successive designation of Tongko as a unit manager, a branch manager and a regional sales manager. (As already explained in our Resolution granting Manulife’s motion for
reconsideration, no evidence on record exists to provide the Court with clues as to the precise impact of all these designations on the contractual agency relationship.) The
Dissent, it must be pointed out, concludes that Tongko’s employment as manager was illegally terminated; thus, he should be accordingly afforded relief therefor. But, can
Tongko be given the remedies incidental to his dismissal as manager separately from his status as an insurance agent? In other words, since the respondents terminated all
relationships with Tongko through the termination letter, can we simply rule that his role as a manager was illegally terminated without touching on the consequences of this
ruling on his status as an insurance agent? Expressed in these terms, the inseparability of his contract as agent with any other relationship that springs therefrom can thus be
seen as an insurmountable legal obstacle.

The Dissent’s compromise approach would also sanction split jurisdiction. The labor tribunals shall have jurisdiction over Tongko’s employment as manager while another entity
shall decide the issues/cases arising from the agency relationship. If the managerial employment is anchored on the agency, how will the labor tribunals decide an issue that is
inextricably linked with a relationship that is outside the loop of their jurisdiction? As already mentioned in the Resolution granting Manulife’s reconsideration, the DOMINANT
relationship in this case is agency and no other.

E. The Dissent’s Cited Cases

The Dissent cites the cases of Great Pacific Life Assurance Corporation v. National Labor Relations Commission and Insular Life Assurance Co., Ltd. v. National Labor Relations
Commission to support the allegation that Manulife exercised control over the petitioner as an employer.

In considering these rulings, a reality that cannot but be recognized is that cases turn and are decided on the basis of their own unique facts; the ruling in one case cannot simply
be bodily lifted and applied to another, particularly when notable differences exist between the cited cases and the case under consideration; their respective facts must be
strictly examined to ensure that the ruling in one applies to another. This is particularly true in a comparison of the cited cases with the present case. Specifically, care should be
taken in reading the cited cases and applying their rulings to the present case as the cited cases all dealt with the proper legal characterization of subsequent management
contracts that superseded the original agency contract between the insurance company and the agent.

In Great Pacific Life, the Ruiz brothers were appointed to positions different from their original positions as insurance agents, whose duties were clearly defined in a subsequent
contract. Similarly, in Insular, de los Reyes, a former insurance agent, was appointed as acting unit manager based on a subsequent contract. In both cases, the Court anchored
its findings of labor control on the stipulations of these subsequent contracts.

In contrast, the present case is remarkable for the absence of evidence of any change in the nature of the petitioner’s employment with Manulife. As previously stated above
and in our assailed Resolution, the petitioner had always been governed by the Agreement from the start until the end of his relationship with Manulife. His agency status never
changed except to the extent of being a lead agent. Thus, the cited cases – where changes in company-agent relationship expressly changed and where the subsequent contracts
were the ones passed upon by the Court – cannot be totally relied upon as authoritative.
We cannot give credit as well to the petitioner’s claim of employment based on the affidavits executed by other Manulife agents describing their duties, because these same
affidavits only affirm their status as independent agents, not as employees. To quote these various claims:

1.a. I have no fixed wages or salary since my services are compensated by way of commissions based on the computed premiums paid in full on the policies obtained
thereat;

1.b. I have no fixed working hours and employ my own method in soliciting insurance at a time and place I see fit;

1.c. I have my own assistant and messenger who handle my daily work load;

1.d. I use my own facilities, tools, materials and supplies in carrying out my business of selling insurance;

xxxx

6. I have my own staff that handles day to day operations of my office;

7. My staff are my own employees and received salaries from me;

xxxx

9. My commission and incentives are all reported to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as income by a self-employed individual or professional with a ten (10) percent
creditable withholding tax. I also remit monthly for professionals.

The petitioner cannot also rely on the letter written by respondent Renato Vergel de Dios to prove that Manulife exercised control over him. As we already explained in the
assailed Resolution:

Even de Dios’ letter is not determinative of control as it indicates the least amount of intrusion into Tongko’s exercise of his role as manager in guiding the sales agents. Strictly
viewed, de Dios’ directives are merely operational guidelines on how Tongko could align his operations with Manulife’s re-directed goal of being a "big league player." The
method is to expand coverage through the use of more agents. This requirement for the recruitment of more agents is not a means-and-method control as it relates, more than
anything else, and is directly relevant, to Manulife’s objective of expanded business operations through the use of a bigger sales force whose members are all on a principal-
agent relationship. An important point to note here is that Tongko was not supervising regular full-time employees of Manulife engaged in the running of the insurance business;
Tongko was effectively guiding his corps of sales agents, who are bound to Manulife through the same agreement that he had with manulife, all the while sharing in these
agents’ commissions through his overrides.
Lastly, in assailing the Agreement between him and Manulife, the petitioner cites Paguio v. National Labor Relations Commission 22 on the claim that the agreement that the
parties signed did not conclusively indicate the legal relationship between them.

The evidentiary situation in the present case, however, shows that despite the petitioner’s insistence that the Agreement was no longer binding between him and Manulife, no
evidence was ever adduced to show that their relationship changed so that Manulife at some point controlled the means and method of the petitioner’s work. In fact, his
evidence only further supports the conclusion that he remained an independent insurance agent – a status he admits, subject only to the qualification that he is at the same
time an employee. Thus, we can only conclude that the Agreement governed his relations with Manulife.

Additionally, it is not lost on us that Paguio is a ruling based on a different factual setting; it involves a publishing firm and an account executive, whose repeated engagement
was considered as an indication of employment. Our ruling in the present case is specific to the insurance industry, where the law permits an insurance company to exercise
control over its agents within the limits prescribed by law, and to engage independent agents for several transactions and within an unlimited period of time without the
relationship amounting to employment. In light of these realities, the petitioner’s arguments on his last argument must also fail.

The dissent also erroneously cites eight other cases — Social Security System v. Court of Appeals, Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Maalat, Algon Engineering Construction
Corporation v. National Labor Relations Commission, Equitable Banking Corporation v. National Labor Relations Commission, Lazaro v. Social Security Commission, Dealco Farms,
Inc. v. National Labor Relations Commission, South Davao Development Company, Inc. v. Gamo, and Abante, Jr. v. Lamadrid Bearing & Parts Corporation. The dissent cited these
cases to support its allegation that labor laws and jurisprudence should be applied in cases, to the exclusion of other laws such as the Civil Code or the Insurance Code, even
when the latter are also applicable.

In Social Security System, Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes, Dealco Farms, and South Davao Development, the issue that repeats itself is whether complainants were employees or
independent contractors; the legal relationships involved are both labor law concepts and make no reference to the Civil Code (or even the Insurance Code). The provisions cited
in the Dissent — Articles 1458-1637 of the Civil Code and Articles 1713-1720 of the Civil Code — do not even appear in the decisions cited.

In Algon, the issue was whether the lease contract should dictate the legal relationship between the parties, when there was proof of an employer-employee relationship. In the
cited case, the lease provisions on termination were thus considered irrelevant because of a substantial evidence of an employment relationship. The cited case lacks the
complexity of the present case; Civil Code provisions on lease do not prescribe that lessees exercise control over their lessors in the way that the Insurance Code and the Civil
provide that insurance companies and principals exercised control over their agents.

The issue in Equitable, on the other hand, is whether a lawyer-client relationship or an employment relationship governs the legal relation between parties. Again, this case is
inapplicable as it does not illustrate the predominance of labor laws and jurisprudence over other laws, in general, and the Insurance Code and Civil Code, in particular. It merely
weighed the evidence in favor of an employment relationship over that of a lawyer-client relationship. Similarly in Lazaro, the Court found ample proof of control determinative
of an employer-employee relationship.1âwphi1 Both cases are not applicable to the present case, which is attended by totally different factual considerations as the petitioner
had not offered any evidence of the company’s control in the means and manner of the performance of his work.
On the other hand, we find it strange that the dissent cites Abante as a precedent, since the Court, in this case, held that an employee-employer relationship is notably absent in
this case as the complainant was a sales agent. This case better supports the majority’s position that a sales agent, who fails to show control in the concept of labor law, cannot
be considered an employee, even if the company exercised control in the concept of a sales agent.

It bears stressing that our ruling in this case is not about which law has primacy over the other, but that we should be able to reconcile these laws. We are merely saying that
where the law makes it mandatory for a company to exercise control over its agents, the complainant in an illegal dismissal case cannot rely on these legally prescribed control
devices as indicators of an employer-employee relationship. As shown in our discussion, our consideration of the Insurance Code and Civil Code provisions does not negate the
application of labor laws and jurisprudence; ultimately, we dismissed the petition because of its failure to comply with the control test.