G.R. No. 20159. March 05, 1923

It appears from the record of the present case that the respondent Pedro N.
Liongson holds a Torrens certificate of title for a tract of land including lot
No. 802 of the cadaster of the municipality of Concepcion, Tarlac, which
certificate is based on a decree of the Court of Land Registration in an
ordinary land registration proceeding. The petitioner Hilarion Timbol holds a
certificate of title based on a free patent issued under Chapter 4 of Act No.
926.

At the beginning of the cadastral registration which embraced said lot No.
802, both Hilarion Timbol and Pedro N. Liongson appeared and laid claim to the
ownership of the lot on the strength of their respective certificates of title.
The trial court held that the title shown by the certificate of Liongson
prevailed over the free patent certificate of title presented by Timbol and in a
decision dated June 29, 1922, adjudicated the land to the former. Timbol
excepted to the decision and filed a motion for a new trial but failed to bring
the motion to the attention of the court and did not appeal. On September 6,
1922, the court, on motion of Liongson, declared the decision final and ordered
that a final decree for said lot No. 802 be issued and that thereafter a writ of
possession be issued in favor of Liongson. At the hearing of the motion Timbol
appeared by his co.unsel in opposition, but again failed to appeal.

Timbol as petitioner in the present case alleges that the court below
exceeded its jurisdiction in attempting, in a cadastral proceeding, to pass upon
the title to land already registered and in ordering that a final decree of
registration be issued for such land. He therefore asks that a writ of
certiorari issue directing the respondent judge to forward to this Court for
review a certified copy of such portions of the record of the aforesaid
cadastral proceedings as relate to lot No. 802; that, thereupon, the decisions,
orders, and decrees of said Court of First Instance of Tarlac, relative to
cadastral lot No. 802 be declared null and void and in excess of its legal
powers and jurisdiction; and that the petitioner Hilarion Timbol be declared the
absolute and exclusive owner of said cadastral lot No. 802, with the crops and
improvements thereon.

The petition must be denied for two reasons. In the first place, the
petitioner appeared in the cadastral case and had an adequate remedy by appeal.
Under such circumstances, certiorari will not lie.

In the second place, we do not think the court below exceeded its
jurisdiction in undertaking, in a cadastral case, to determine the relative rank
of the two certificates of title in question and, in its ultimate analysis, that
is the effect of the court’s action. The court erred in ordering the issuance of
a new final decree in favor of the respondent Liongson; it should have limited
itself to ordering the cancellation of both certificates of title and the
issuance of a new transfer certificate of title in favor of Liongson, in which
new certificate the land should be described in accordance with the results of
the cadastral survey. But the new decree rests on the former decree which is not
reopened or set aside; the error of the court therefore does not go to the
jurisdiction and cannot be reached by certiorari.

The petitioner may have been misled by our statement in the case of Pamintuan
vs. San Agustin (43 Phil., 558) that “in cadastral cases the jurisdiction
of the court over lands already registered is limited to the necessary
correction of technical errors in the description of the lands, provided such
corrections do not impair the substantial rights of the registered owner, and
that such jurisdiction cannot operate to deprive a registered owner of his
title.”

This statement while in the main true is, perhaps, a little too broad in so
far as it may be construed to exclude from the jurisdiction of the court the
power to determine the priority of over-lapping or over-lying registered titles.
An examination of the decision in which the statement occurs will show that it
is based on the self-evident proposition that when a title has been finally and
definitely settled in a registration proceeding by a decree of a court of
competent jurisdiction, the decree cannot be reopened in a cadastral case, a
proceeding of the same general character. There is nothing in this proposition
which militates against allowing the court in a cadastral case to determine
which one of several conflicting registered titles shall prevail. This power
would seem to be necessary for a complete settlement of the title to the land,
the express purpose of cadastral proceedings, and must therefore be considered
to be within the jurisdiction of the court in such proceedings. And, as already
stated, no final decree of registration was reopened or set aside by the court
below in the present instance.

For a discussion of the weight of a certificate of title issued by virtue of
a patent, see De los Reyes vs. Razon (38 Phil., 480).

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied without costs.

Araullo,
C.J., Street, Avanceña, Villamor, Johns, and Romualdez, JJ.,
concur.

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MALCOLM, J.:

I concur for the first reason set out in the
decision.