GASHEM SHOOKAT BAKSH v. HON.

COURT OF APPEALS AND MARILOU GONZALES

GR 97336, February 19. 1993

FACTS:

Marilou Gonzales is a 22 year old, single Filipina, and high school graduate. Gashem Shookat Baksh is an
Iranian citizen who was an exchange student taking up his second year in Medicine.

Before August 20, 1987, Baksh courted and proposed to marry Gonzales. For a year, they lived together
in his apartment. Within that year, Gonzales claims that Baksh maltreated and threatened to kill her.
She filed a complaint against him, and in their confrontation, he cancelled their wedding agreement and
asked her not to live with him anymore since he was already married with someone from Bacolod City.
He met his alleged wife years back when he finished his B.S. Biology course. According to findings, he did
not marry the woman, just like what he did to Gonzales.

Baksh through deceit and false pretenses, promised to marry Gonzales which led to the latter giving up
her very own virtue and womanhood for him. She became pregnant, but he gave her medicine to abort
the baby. Even her very own family has already started to prepare for the wedding.

Baksh criticized the trial court for liberally invoking Filipino customs and traditions to him, an Iranian
Moslem. He claims that he never proposed nor told Gonzales’ family that he would be marrying their
daughter.

ISSUES:

w/n damages may be recovered for a breach of promise to marry on the basis of Article 21 of the Civil
Code of the Philippines

DECISION:

The existing rule is that a breach of promise to marry per se is not an actionable wrong. However, the
acts of Baksh are undoubtedly against morals, good customs, and public policy, and are even gravely
derogatory and insulting to our women.

Article 21 of the NCC expands the concept of torts or quasi-delict (culpa aquiliana). These are moral
wrongs which are impossible for human foresight to specifically enumerate and punish in the statute
books.

Article 21 may be applied in a breach of promise to marry where the woman is a victim of moral
seduction. Baksh’s promise of marriage was a subtle and deceptive scheme to obtain the consent to
sexual acts. He was not at all moved by good faith and honest motive especially since he degraded the
defendant for her ignoble birth, inferior educational background, poverty, and dishonourable
employment.