FREE ACCESS TO

COURTS
Nel Frances Refugio
ARTICLE III, SECTION 11 OF
THE 1987 CONSTITUTION
Reiterates and widens this right.
 CASES WHERE FREE
ACCESS TO COURTS ARE
EXPRESSLY DELINEATED
BY THE SUPREME COURT
ACAR V. ROSAL
G.R. NO. L-21707
Where farmers seek the authorization of the Court of First Instance and authorize them to sue
as pauper litigants. It was subsequently denied by the aforementioned court.
The Supreme Court held that an applicant for leave to sue in forma pauperis
need not be a pauper; the fact that he is able-bodied and may earn the necessary money is
no answer to his state­ment that he has not sufficient means to prosecute the action or to secure
the costs.
It suf­fices that plaintiff is indigent. Indigent are those persons who have no property
or source of income sufficient for their support aside from their own labor, though self-
supporting when able to work and in employment. A pauper on the other hand is a person so
poor that he must be supported at public expense.
RE: QUERY OF MR. ROGER C.
PRIORESCHI RE: EXEMPTION
FROM LEGAL AND FILING
FEES OF THE GOOD
SHEPHERD FOUNDATION,
INC., A. M. NO. 09-6-9-SC
 seeks to be exempted from paying legal
The Good Shepherd Foundation, Inc.
fees for its indigent and underprivileged clients couching their claim on the free
access clause embodied in Sec. 11, Art. III of the Constitution.

that the Court cannot grant exemption of

It was held by the Supreme Court
payment of legal fees to foundations/institutions working for indigent
and underprivileged people. According to Sec. 19, Rule 141, Rules of Court, only a
natural party litigant may be regarded as an indigent litigant that can be exempted from payment
of legal fees. Exemption cannot be extended to the foundations even if they are working for the
indigent and underprivileged people.
-END-