Quoted hereunder, for your information, is a resolution of the Third Division of this

Court dated September 30, 1996

“G.R. No. 125706 – CHINA CHANG JIANG ENERGY CORPORATION (PHILIPPINES)

versus ROSAL INFRASTRUCTURE BUILDERS, represented by its General Manager,
ALBERTO S. SURLA, CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY ARBITRATION COMMISSION,
PRUDENCIO F. BARANDA, and the COURT OF APPEALS.

Now that Section 1, Article III, as amended, is submitted to test in the present
petition, we rule to uphold its validity with full certainty. However, this should not be
understood to mean that the parties may no longer stipulate to submit their disputes to
a different forum or arbitral boy. Parties may continue to stipulate as regards their
preferred forum in case of voluntary arbitration, but in so doing, they may not divest
the CIAC of jurisdiction as provided by law. Under the elementary principle on the law
on contracts that laws obtaining in a jurisdiction form part of all agreements, when the
law provides that the Board acquires jurisdiction when the parties to the contract agree
to submit the same to voluntary arbitration, the law in effect, automatically gives the
parties an alternative forum before whom they may submit their disputes. That
alternative forum is the CIAC. This, to the mind of the Court, is the real spirit of E.O.
No. 1008, as implemented by Section 1, Article III of the CIAC Rules.

The herein interpretation is not, in its strict sense, a reversal of a previous

pronouncement in the Tesco case necessitating a ruling by the Court En Banc
considering the variance in the factual circumstances, as well as the governing
procedural rules applicable to the two distinct cases.

The Court also takes this opportunity to dispel any mistaken notion that
substantial rights were created or modified by the CIAC in its Resolution No. 2-91 and
3-93, as regards matters of jurisdiction. We would also like to clarify that such rights
were vested as early as of the time E.O. No. 1008 which took effect February 1985.
Howeer, said provision had not been properly implemented in the original version of
Section 1 of the CIAC Rules. Thus, amendments through Resolutions No. 2-91 and 3-93
were called for.
WHEREFORE, premises considered, the instant petition is hereby DISMISSED and the
appealed decision is hereby AFFIRMED.

SO ORDERED.”