Short answer. No, not without a valid reason. The Civil Code makes an agency irrevocable when a partner is appointed manager in the partnership contract itself and his removal from management would be unjustifiable. Because your appointment came from the partnership agreement, the other partners cannot simply remove you at will the way an ordinary agency could be revoked.
What the law says
An agency cannot be revoked if a bilateral contract depends upon it, or if it is the means of fulfilling an obligation already contracted, or if a partner is appointed manager of a partnership in the contract of partnership and his removal from the management is unjustifiable.
Civil Code, Article 1927 — Irrevocable Agency (Agency Coupled With an Interest). Read the full provision →
Why ordinary agency rules do not simply apply
An agency relationship is, as a general matter, revocable at the principal's will, but Article 1927 of the Civil Code lists specific situations where that general revocability does not hold. One of them is exactly your case: where a partner is appointed manager of a partnership in the contract of partnership itself, and removing him from that management would be unjustifiable. When your management authority comes from the partnership agreement, rather than from a separate, freely revocable designation, the statute treats the arrangement differently from an ordinary agency that any principal can end at will.
What makes this kind of agency irrevocable
The article groups this situation together with two others, an agency on which a bilateral contract depends, and an agency that is the means of fulfilling an obligation already contracted, because in all three, someone besides the principal has a stake in the agency continuing. Here, that stake is the manager-partner's own interest under the partnership contract, an interest the other partners agreed to when they signed that same contract. Removing him from management touches the partnership agreement itself, not merely a revocable instruction given outside it.
The limit: removal still possible if justified
This protection is not absolute. The statute only blocks removal that would be unjustifiable. It does not say a manager-partner can never be removed; it says he cannot be removed without valid cause once his appointment comes from the partnership contract. If the other partners have a real, justifiable basis for the removal, the same article does not stand in their way. The practical question in a dispute like this is usually whether the reason offered for removal is genuine and sufficient, not whether removal is possible at all.
What this means for you in practice
Because your appointment was written into the partnership agreement itself, your co-partners cannot treat your removal as a routine, no-reason-needed act the way they could revoke an ordinary agency. They would need an unjustifiable-removal analysis to work against them, meaning a removal without valid cause could be challenged as improper under Article 1927. What counts as a sufficient reason will depend on the specific facts and on whatever else the partnership agreement itself says about your role and how it may be changed.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- International Exchange Bank now Union Bank of the Philippines vs. Sps. Jerome and Quinnie Briones and John Doe, G.R. No. 205657, March 29, 2017 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Genevieve Lim vs. Florencio Saban, G.R. No. 163720, December 16, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- National Sugar Trading, etc. vs. Philippine National Bank, G.R. No. 151218, January 28, 2003 — read the decision on LawPhil →