Uninsured liability

Notice to Business Owners/Representatives

Ordinance No. 398, S-2016

Mandatory Public Legal Liability Insurance Coverage

All business owners with capitalization and gross income of P150,000.00 may secure the above coverage.

Except those within public markets, medical clinic, dental clinic, accounting office and law offices and with existing insurance policy.

Mandatory is the operative word there. Taken to mean that the “public legal liability insurance coverage” is obligatory, compulsory, and required by law of “all business owners with capitalization and gross income of more than P150,000…” 

The force of the mandatum however gets undue dissipation with the choice of  may by which the insurance coverage is to be secured. As optionality is inhered in the modal verb may. The obligatory must would have been more authoritatively binding. More definitively yet, the may clause could have carried an or else proviso defining penalties for failure to secure the coverage. On pain of is as commanding, if terrifying, as an ordinance can ever get.              

No pretensions of me lawyering here. Merely engaging my trade tools of semantics and syntax to, hopefully, effect a clearer comprehension of Angeles City Council Ordinance No. 398, S-2016 that is found only in its synopsis posted on that cork board at the lobby of city hall.

Clarity though comes last, and consequently, comprehension least in the succeeding single-sentence paragraph on exceptions, to re-paste:  Except those within public markets, medical clinic, dental clinic, accounting office and law offices and with existing insurance policy.

Did the ordinance mean “those within public markets, medical clinic, dental clinic, accounting office and law offices” did not have to secure insurance coverage? Them, aside from others already “with existing insurance policy”?

Or they – in the first instance above – comprise the exceptions because they are already covered? If so, the and should have been taken out of the sentence to read: Except those within public markets, medical clinic, dental clinic, accounting office and law offices with existing insurance policy.

Were that the case, there would have been no need for the exception paragraph altogether. Succinct for the notice to have read: All business owners with capitalization and gross income of P150,000.00 are required to secure the above coverage, if they have not one yet.

Some redundancy there actually as, it goes without saying, that the conditional if clause does not apply to those already with the required coverage prior to application for permits. Still, no harm in being doubly clear. 

As the exception stands, it…well, stands on the dangerous, socially volatile ground of class legislation. Of favoring, in this case exempting, a group over others.

Why, specifically, those within public markets? Why not those in private markets, if any in the city, or those in talipapa and tiangge, or those into home industries or micro-enterprises like sari-sari stores, or those little kiosks in malls? 

Why only medical and dental clinics? Why not wellness clinics? Or sports clinics?

Why accounting and law offices? Why not engineering offices? And yes, local media offices too?

Why? I cannot fathom why. Oh, why. Oh, why?

As often, in matters – moral, material, intellectual – of profound consequence, I leave it to the ever-astute Ashley Manabat to take the meta out of the physics and clear my understanding of things. 

As though brimming with the Force, and smiling like Yoda himself, Ashley pointed to the principal authors of the ordinance, for starters. One, a dentist by profession. The other, a kid brother to a prominent lawyer.

So, there’s why.         

As to the question raised by one Mike Enriquez in his facebook post: “Magkano ing komisyun da ring keng city hall para keng insurance bawat business permit? E ya business-friendly ing Angeles talaga (How much commission does city hall get from the insurance coverage for each business permit? Angeles is not really business-friendly),” I am in dearth of why’s to ask.

And the city council, particularly the ordinance’s prime pushers, has maintained a deafening quiet about it.

So, I just have to take the word of the city administrator Atty. Dennis Albert Pamintuan: “Ito ang magsisilbing proteksyon ng mga mamimili at proteksyon din ng namumuhunan (This will serve as protection to consumers and investors).”

No matter the city businessmen’s liability to believe him…well, uninsured.