BPI v.

Lifetime Marketing
G.R. No. 176434
June 25, 2008

Facts:
Lifetime Marketing Corporation (LMC) opened a current account with the Bank of
Philippine Islands (BPI) and required its agents to present a validated deposit slip. Alice
Laurel, one of LMC's educational consultants or sales agent, deposited checks to LMC's
account at different branches of BPI, except for thirteen (13) checks which bore no
machine validation. A verification with BPI by LMC showed that Alice after the check
deposits were machine-validated, Alice would request the teller to reverse the
transactions. A claim for damages was instituted against BPI and the trial court rendered
a decision in favor of LMC, which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals.

Issue: Whether or not BPI exercised the highest level of care in handling LMC's account.

Held:
No. BPI's negligence is the proximate cause of the loss, as it did not require the surrender
of the machine-validated deposit slips before reversing the deposit transactions. Banks
are duty-bound to treat their clients with the highest degree of care, and BPI cannot
escape liability due to LMC's failure to scrutinize the monthly statements.