GSIS vs. Court of Appeals and R. Balais

G.R. No. 117572, January 29, 1998

FACTS:

Private respondent Rosa Balais an employee of National Housing Authority suffered from Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Secondary to Ruptured Aneurysm, because of this she can no longer perform efficiently. For this reason, she retired and filed for disability benefits. GSIS granted her application for temporary total disability and later was changed to permanent partial disability. She again filed with GSIS an application for permanent total disability, which GSIS denied on the ground that her condition does not qualify for permanent total disability.

ISSUE:

Whether or not respondent Rosa Balais is entitled of her permanent total disability?

HELD:

“A person’s disability may not manifest fully at one precise moment in time but rather over a period of time. It is possible that an injury which at first was considered to be temporary may later on become permanent or one suffers a partial disability becomes totally and permanently disabled from the same cause” (GSIS vs. CA. G.R. No. 116015, July 31, 1996)

In the case at bar, the denial of the claim for permanent total disability benefit of private respondent who, for 38 long years during her prime had rendered her best service with an unblemished record and who was compelled to retire on account of her worsening conditioning would indeed subvert the salutary intentions of the law in favor of the worker. The court, therefore, affirms the decision of the respondent Court of Appeals decreeing conversion of private respondent’s disability from permanent partial disability to permanent total disability.