G.R. No. 9387. October 13, 1914
TIBURCIA DE LIZA, PETITIONER AND APPELLANT, VS. THE DIRECTOR OF LANDS, OBJECTOR AND APPELLEE.
TORRES, J.:
applicant from the judgment rendered on August 12,1913, by the Honorable James
A. Ostrand, judge, who therein decreed the registration in the name of the
applicant, Tiburcia de Liza, of the part of the land described in the
application, situated west of a straight line drawn from point 23 to point 42 of
the plan marked as Exhibit A; and denied the application with respect to the
rest of the land.
On February 6, 1913, counsel for Tiburcia de Liza
presented an application before the Court of Land Registration praying for the
registration, in conformity with law, of the rural property belonging to his
client, situated in the place known as Almendras, barrio of San Isidro, town of
Concepcion, Tarlac Said application recited that the property in question was
bounded on the north by the properties of Guillermo Baron, Alfonso Pinea,
Paulino Gueco, Ciriaco Pinpin, and Cayetano Rivera; on the northeast by the
Batibat Creek; on the southeast by the homestead of Jose Liza and that of
Engracia Gonzalez; on the south by the Balen Creek, and the properties formerly
belonging to Guillermo Baron and Maria Dimaliuat and now to the same Guillermo
Baron and to Diego Cardenas; and on the west by the lands of Jose Lacsamana and
Guillermo Baron; that the said property contained an area of 6,826,020 square
meters or a little over 682 hectares and was assessed for the purpose of
taxation at $11,215 United States currency; that it was unencumbered and no one
except the applicant had any right or share therein; that it was now occupied by
the applicant herself and was acquired by her by gift inter vivos from her
parents, Gil de Liza and Teresa Dizon, according to a notarial instrument of
April 11, 1911; and that, in the remote possibility that the application could
not be allowed in accordance with the Land Registration Act, the applicant would
rely upon the provisions of Chapter VI of Act No. 926, inasmuch as she1 had been
in possession of the land and had been cultivating it for the production of rice
and sugar cane for more than thirty years.
The application was accompanied by a plan and a technical description of the
land, four titles of composition with the Government, a deed of sale executed in
favor of Gil de Liza by the previous owners of the property and the composition
titles obtained by the vendors, and also by a certified copy of a possessory
information secured by the said Gil de Liza for the purpose of proving his
possession of, 55 hectares of land and inscribed in the property registry.
By a writing of March 31, 1913, the Attorney-General opposed the registration
on the grounds that the land in question belonged to the Government of the
United States and was under the control and administration of the Government of
the Philippine Islands, wherefore it could not duly be registered in the name of
the applicant, and that the alleged titles presented referred to only an area of
345 hectares, while that mentioned in the application was of 682 hectares. He
therefore prayed for the dismissal of the application, with the costs against
the applicant.
At the hearing of the case, besides the opposition of the Director of Lands,
there appeared likewise as objectors the applicants for homestead Severo
Sanchez, Leoncio Sanchez, and Francisco Aquino, and, after an examination of the
parol and documentary evidence submitted by the parties, the court rendered the
judgment aforementioned, to which counsel for the applicant excepted and moved
for a rehearing. This motion was denied, an exception was taken by the applicant
and, the latter having presented the proper bill of exceptions, the same was
approved, certified, and forwarded to the clerk of this court, together with a
transcript of the documentary and parol evidence taken at the trial.
In
order that approval may be secured for an. application for the registration of
real estate, whether rural or urban, in the property registry, in accordance
with the laws that govern in the matter, it is indispensable that the applicant
satisfactorily prove that he is the owner or proprietor of the land or, real
property which he seeks to have inscribed in the registry.
The record in the case at bar discloses that the applicant, Tiburcia de Liza,
acquired from her parents, Gil de Liza and Teresa Dizon, the said rural
property, through a donation inter vivos, which was recorded in a
notarial instrument wherein, moreover, the said donation is shown to have been
accepted by the donees; that Gil de Liza succeeded in uniting into one single
large tract of land, the subject matter of the application, several parcels of
land, some of them by purchase and others through occupation—a possession
afterwards legalized by composition titles obtained from the Government under
the previous sovereignty; and that her possession of a certain area of 55
hectares toward the east of the said large tract of land appears to be
accredited by the possessory information approved by an order of April 11, 1893*
and inscribed in the property registry on May 12 of the same year.
The record also shows that the applicant and her predecessors, Gil de Liza
and his wife, have been for more than thirty years in possession of the said
property composed of several parcels of land, utilizing it for the growing of
rice, sugar cane and other useful crops, aside from the possession enjoyed by
the former owners from whom the said Gil de Liza had acquired or purchased a
part of the property in question.
In view of the documentary and parol evidence furnished by the applicant, the
court held that the latter as well as her predecessors had been in legitimate
possession, under title of ownership, of the land designated on the plan,
Exhibit A, as situated on the west, as far as points 23 and 42, and although its
area is much greater than what it is shown to be by the documents exhibited as
titles to the said property, the court was nevertheless of the opinion that the
excess in area was due to errors in the surveys on which the titles granted by
the Government were based. He therefore held that the greater part of the land
comprised by the plan, Exhibit A, from its extreme western boundary to points 23
and 42 of the plan, toward the east, belonged to the applicant, and that the
latter was entitled to have the said large tract of land inscribed in the
property registry.
With respect to the parcel of land comprised within the area extending from
the said points 23 and 42 of the plan toward the east in the direction of the
Batibat Creek, the court held that the applicant had presented no title of
ownership obtained through composition with the Government, and that for it she
would therefore have to rely upon the provisions of subsection 6 of section 54
of Act No. 926.
Three parcels of land included in the plan, Exhibit A, between the said
points 23 and 42 and the eastern boundary toward the Batibat Creek, were duly
acquired from their original owners by the applicant’s father and predecessor in
interest: one of them, of 22 hectares, in September, 1888; another, of 16£
hectares, in August, 1891; and the third parcel, of 22 hectares, in August,
1892. Gil de Liza held possession of the said three parcels of land from the
dates just mentioned Until April, 1911, when he and his wife made the donation
before referred to, but prior to so doing, and in order to legalize his
possession by placing it under the protection of the law, he secured the said
possessory information and recorded it in the property registry in the following
month of May. The applicant proved, furthermore; that she, her predecessor in
interest, and the original owners of the parcels purchased had been in
possession of the land extending from the points 23 and 42 toward the east and
the Batibat Creek, although Gil de Liza voluntarily stated in his testimony that
the whole tract of land was not plowed and cultivated, but only a part of it
toward the west, for the Reason that the clearing of the land, covered with
forest toward the said Batibat Creek, had been and was very costly, and
furthermore because the revolution that broke out prevented him from continuing
to plow and clear the whole of the said part covered with forest. However, by
the testimony of the witnesses Juan Gomez and Isaac Casupanan, who had been
working on this property, it was proven that a large part of the land shown in
the plan as on the east was under cultivation and planted in rice, sugar cane
and other crops.
It is to be observed that, as stated by the trial judge, it is difficult, if
not impossible, to fix the former boundaries of each parcel, owing to the fact
that one parcel was added to another as the applicant’s father acquired it
through occupation and composition with the Government or by purchase from its
former owners, all these parcels being incorporated into one single tract, as
shown in the said plan, Exhibit A. Notwithstanding this, none of the owners of
the adjoining lands, nor any other who claimed to be injured protested against
the application for registration, except the three parties who each occupied by
right of homestead a parcel of land toward the eastern end in the part that was
unplowed and uncleared of forest, near the Batibat Creek.
Besides, the possession of the land shown on the plan as lying toward the
east, which was held by the applicant’s predecessor in interest and is now held
by the said Tiburcia de Liza, appears to have been duly proven by means of
witnesses and the said possessory information. This latter, moreover, shows that
an irrigation system was afterwards installed on the aforementioned land, which
before was unirrigated, at the expense of its possessor, Gil de Liza an ancestor
of the applicant, and this improvement would not have been, made if the person
who paid for it had not owned the land.
The possessor of land who is provided with a possessory information title
inscribed in the property registry is entitled in law and before the courts to
be held a lawful possessor as owner, so long as no other interested party
appears and proves a better right, for the said registered possessory
information is prima facie proof of his right of possession under just title and
has the same efficacy as that vested in all other titles enumerated in Acts No.
496 and No. 809. (Inchausti & Co. vs. The Commanding General of the Division
of the Philippines, 6 Phil, Rep., 556, and other subsequent decisions of this
court, in all of Which the same theory has been uniformly maintained.)
Furthermore, the owners of the two adjoining parcels of land on the north and
the south, Cayetano Rivera and Engracia Gonzalez, respectively, each obtained
from the Court of Land Registration a decree of registration of their land, and
the land comprised by the said possessory information was the recognized
boundary, on the south side, of the land of Cayetano Rivera, and on the north
side, of that of Engracia Gonzalez, for the land that was the subject matter of
the possessory information brought by the said Gil de Liza, the predecessor in
interest of the applicant, Tiburcia de Liza, was situated just between the two
properties of the said Rivera and Gonzalez, who recognized Gil de Liza as the
lawful possessor, if not. as the owner, of the land between their respective
parcels. All these facts appear in the copies of the judgments of the land court
rendered in their respective cases, and in the copies of the plans of their
lands, found on pages 129 to 134 of this record.
The admission and judicial recognition on the part of Rivera and Gonzalez,
the owners of the lands to the north and south of the land that is the subject
matter of the said possessory information inscribed in the property registry, of
the applicant’s character and quality of possessor, under right of ownership, of
the land situated between their respective properties, virtually corroborates
the parol evidence adduced by the applicant and the value and efficacy of the
said possessory information recorded in the registry on May 12, 1893. Owing to
the lapse of more than twenty years, this possessory information now constitutes
a true and lawful title of ownership of the land to which it refers and which
was, nevertheless, excluded from registration by the judgment appealed from.
These conclusions are based on the facts that no one has disputed the
applicant’s right to the land, except the three objectors, the possessors
through homestead of three small parcels of the same toward its eastern end near
the Batibat Creek, already expressly defined in the plan, Exhibit A, and that
the said possessory information has not been impugned and assailed as false,
either civilly or criminally.
These three parcels must be that part of
the land which Gil de Liza admitted he was unable to clear and plow, because;
among other reasons, of the outbreak of the revolution, and being thus in a
certain manner materially abandoned by the possessor of the remainder of the
land, they were occupied by the said three, objectors, who relied upon the
benefits granted by Act No. 926.
Although the record in this case does not disclose whether the said three
objectors, the possessors of those parcels of land, had obtained a grant of the
same as homesteads, in accordance with law, yet, since the applicant has not
proven that such objectors’ allegation is not true or unfounded, it is to be
presumed that the applicant is not in possession of the parcels of land occupied
by the aforesaid three objectors, for her predecessor in interest averred in his
sworn testimony that he was unable to clear and plow them, wherefore, as he did
not in fact possess them, while these objectors did through the homestead
privilege, it would be improper to register in the applicant’s name the said
three’ parcels of land situated toward the east and near the Batibat Creek and
which are described as within certain boundaries and separated by lines from the
main tract of land held by the applicant as the owner and proprietor
thereof.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment appealed from is affirmed; provided,
however, after a declaration of general default, the registration of all the
land described in the plan Exhibit A, shall be ordered and decreed in the name
and in behalf of the applicant, Tiburcia de Liza, with the sole exclusion of the
three parcels of land situated toward the east near the Batibat Creek, which now
appear as separated by lines from the larger area that is the subject matter of
the application and are occupied as homesteads by the objectors Severo and
Leoncio Sanchez and Francisco Aquino; and provided, further, that the
application shall be denied as regards the said parcels of land and the
aforementioned plan shall be accordingly amended in conformity with this
decision.
Arellano, C. J., Johnson and Araullo, JJ., concur.
MORELAND, J., with whom concurs
CARSON, J.,
I agree to the decision except in so far as it seems to give an
informacion posesoria the same qualities as the law (Act No. 496) gives
to Torrens titles.