MEANING OF BORROWING STATUTES - 36 PJP 21

Date Published:
  1. RECOMMENDED CITATION: DELA PEÑA, Mark Angelo S. (2024), “Meaning of Borrowing Statutes,” 36 PJP 21, available at <insert link> (last accessed on <date>).
  2. PJP BLOG: Although this content has received a favorable recommendation for citation from the admin team of PJP, it is not yet considered a peer-reviewed journal entry.
  3. CONTACT US: For immediate action on requests, comments, concerns, suggestions, and other forms of feedback, please message us on Facebook at www.m.me/projectjurisprudence.

Defining “borrowing statutes,” the Supreme Court in one case[1] said that characterization of a statute into a procedural or substantive law becomes irrelevant when the country of the forum has a “borrowing statute.”

A borrowing statute has the practical effect of treating the foreign statute of limitation as one of substance.[2] A “borrowing statute” directs the state of the forum to apply the foreign statute of limitations to the pending claims based on a foreign law.[3] While there are several kinds of “borrowing statutes,” its most popular form provides that an action barred by the laws of the place where it accrued will not be enforced in the forum even though the local statute has not run against it.[4]

For example, Section 48 of the old Code of Civil Procedure provides:

“If by the laws of the state or country where the cause of action arose, the action is barred, it is also barred in the Philippine Islands.”

Section 48 has not been repealed or amended by the NCC. In fact, Article 2270 of the NCC repealed only those provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure which were inconsistent with the NCC. There is no provision in the NCC which is inconsistent with or contradictory to Section 48 of the Code of Civil Procedure.[5] In other words, the Philippines still adheres to the principle that an action barred by prescription in the place where the cause of action arose is likewise barred in this jurisdiction. This is one of the reasons why the principle of lex loci delicti commissii, although a traditional rule, still finds application in these modern times.

[1] LWV Construction v. Dupo (2009).

[2] Goodrich, Conflict of Laws, 152-153 [1938].

[3] Siegel, Conflicts, 183 [1975].

[4] Goodrich and Scoles, Conflict of Laws, 152-153 [1938].

[5] Paras, Philippine Conflict of Laws, 104 [7th ed.].