Makati Development Corporation

Issue: Whether or not the exercise of police power is valid.

RULING:

No. Both are constitutional. All contracts are subject to the overriding demands, needs, and
interests of the greater number as the State may determine in the legitimate exercise of
police power. The Court guarantees sanctity of contract and is said to be the “law between
the contracting parties,” but while it is so, it cannot contravene “law, morals, good customs,
public order, or public policy.” Above all, it cannot be raised as a deterrent to police power,
designed precisely to promote health, safety, peace, and enhance the common good, at the
expense of contractual rights, whenever necessary. Police power is the power to prescribe
regulations to promote the health, morals, peace, education, good order or safety and
general welfare of the people. Invariably described as “the most essential, insistent, and
illimitable of powers” and “in a sense, the greatest and most powerful attribute of
government,” the exercise of the power may be judicially inquired into and corrected only if
it is capricious, whimsical, unjust or unreasonable, there having been a denial of due
process or a violation of any other applicable constitutional guarantee. Police power is
elastic and must be responsive to various social conditions; it is not confined within narrow
circumscriptions of precedents resting on past conditions; it must follow the legal progress
of a democratic way of life. Public welfare, when clashing with the individual right to
property, should be made to prevail through the state’s exercise of its police power. Herein,
the MMC Ordinance represents a legitimate exercise of police power, as the ordinance is
neither capricious or arbitrary or unreasonable; but that it is based on compelling interests
of general welfare. The restrictive easements are similar to any other contract, and should
not deter the valid exercise of police power. The MMC has reclassified Jupiter Street into a
“high density commercial zone, pursuant to Ordinance 81-01. Sangalang, BAVA, et. al., thus
have no cause of action on the strength alone of said “deed restrictions.”

This means that the activity or property sought to be regulated affects the general welfare; if it
does,
then the enjoyment of the rights flowing therefrom may have to yield to the interests of the greater
number

Undoubtedly, the MMC Ordinance represents a legitimate exercise of police power. The petitioners
have not shown why we should hold otherwise other than for the supposed "non-impairment"
guaranty of the Constitution, which, as we have declared, is secondary to the more compelling
interests of general welfare. The Ordinance has not been shown to be capricious or arbitrary or
unreasonable to warrant the reversal of the judgments so appealed. In that connection, we find no
reversible error to have been committed by the Court of Appeals.

WHEREFORE, premises considered, these petitions are DENIED No pronouncement as to costs.