Short answer. Yes. Philippine law gives a person who paid more than their own share of civil liability from a crime a right of action against the others for the amounts corresponding to their respective shares. This applies whether the payment arose from solidary liability or from enforced subsidiary liability.
What the law says
Whenever the liability in solidum or the subsidiary liability has been enforced, the person by whom payment has been made shall have a right of action against the others for the amount of their respective shares.
Revised Penal Code, Article 110 — Several And Subsidiary Civil Liability, And Order Of Payment. Read the full provision →
How civil liability is shared among principals, accomplices, and accessories
Article 110 of the Revised Penal Code governs the civil liability that arises from the commission of a felony. The rule is that principals, accomplices, and accessories are each jointly and severally liable within their own class — meaning any one of them can be required to pay the full amount owed by their class. But the liability runs in a priority sequence: the victim's property can be seized from principals first, then accomplices, then accessories. Within each class, they share the liability equally, and if one pays more than their portion, the right of reimbursement arises.
The right to recover from co-offenders
The statute creates an express right of action. If you — as an accomplice — were made to pay more than your share because the other accomplices had no property, or because the creditor chose to enforce against you first, you can sue the others for what they should have contributed. This is not a moral principle but a statutory right: "the person by whom payment has been made shall have a right of action against the others for the amount of their respective shares." The cause of action is independent of the criminal case and can be pursued in a separate civil proceeding.
The subsidiary layer — when an accomplice pays for a principal
Article 110 also addresses the subsidiary tier. If the principals have no property and the victim's award is enforced against the accomplices, those accomplices have been made to pay a liability that belongs primarily to the principals. In that case, the same right of action applies: the accomplice who paid can go after the principals for their portion. The payment chain runs from victims to principals to accomplices to accessories in terms of who pays first — but the right to recover flows back in the opposite direction.
Practical limits on recovery
Having a right of action does not guarantee actual recovery. If the co-offenders against whom you have a claim have no assets, a favorable judgment remains unenforceable. The more practical difficulty is often the relationship between accomplices: people who committed a crime together rarely have cooperative post-conviction relationships, and evidence of what each party paid and what each owes requires careful documentation. If you are in this situation, keep records of what you paid, what the court awarded, and what the relative shares of each party were as determined by the judgment — those documents are the foundation of the reimbursement claim.