GUILLERMO P. VILLASOR, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. RODOLFO A. MEDEL, MARIANO MEDALLA, MILAGROS C. ARANETA, REPRESENTED BY HER LEGAL GUARDIAN, LORENZO L. ARANETA AND JOSE L. JUS…

TUASON, J.:


This was an action of legal redemption brought under Articles 1521 and 1522
of the Civil Code. In so far as they are pertinent to this appeal, the facts may
be condensed as follows: A large tract of land situated in the municipality of
Bacolod, Negros Occidental, and covered by several certificates of title,
formerly belonged as conjugal property to Guillermo Villasor and Basilisa
Camento, man and wife Guillermo Villasor died on September 21, 1914, leaving as
universal heirs his widow and five children. One of the children died intestate
while a minor and her share of the land passed to her mother, Basilisa
Camento

On July 15, 1921, Basilisa Camento, as judicial administratrix of her
deceased husband’s estate, submitted to the court a project of partition,
whereby undivided part of the estate was allotted to her four surviving children
and 6/10 to herself. That partition was approved in due course.

On April 16, 1926, Basilisa Camento executed a deed of donation intervivos by
which she gave all her 6/10 undivided share to her grandchildren in equal
undivided shares. One of her grandchildren was Guillermo P. Villasor, the
present plaintiff, who, by virtue of the donation, became the owner of 3/20
undivided part of the estate. The donation was duly accepted by the legal
guardian of the minors, Jose C. Villasor, duly appointed by the court, but it
was not registered until December 2, 1936.

Meanwhile, on July 1, 1931 Jose C.
Villasor, as guardian and in behalf of three grandchildren of Basilisa Camento
named Remedios, Luis and Lilia Jurilla, and with the necessary permission of the
court, sold their shares to Mariano Medalla, appellee The sale included the
share of Resurreccion Villasor, one of the daughters of the original owners and
the mother of the three minors just mentioned and represented by Jose C.
Villasor and both Resurreccion Villasor and her husband, Felipe Jurilla, signed
the deed of sale with their children’s legal guardian. The total sale price was
P22,000.00, of which P12,000.00 pertained to the three minors shares, according
to the plaintiff’s computation.

On March 11, 1939, the plaintiff, who had reached majority on the 6th of that
month, “through his attorneys addressed a registered special delivery letter to
Mariano Medalla, formally offering him the amount of P12,000.00 for the
repurchase” of the shares of the three minors surnamed Jurilla, but he made no
offer for Resurreccion Villasor’s share Rodolfo A. Medel, Milagros C. Araneta
and Jose J. Justiniani bought the shares of other co-owners of the tract.
Refusing at first to sell to the plaintiff, they were made defendants with
Medalla in the same case under separate causes of action, but the suit as to
them was settled in some form or other before trial or appeal.

Mariano Medalla, by way of special defenses, alleged that by virtue of a
final project of partition filed and approved by the court in Case No. 7612 on
August 10, 1939, (after the present suit was instituted but before it was
tried), the portions of the estate now known as lots Nos. 832, 833, 834 and
836, had been segregated and adjudicated to him (Medalla); (2) that the
complaint did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action; and
(3) that the plaintiff at the time of the sale of those portions to Mariano
Medalla on July 1, 1931, was not yet a co-owner of the hacienda, having
become such only on December 2, 1936, when for the first time he appeared as one
of its registered owners. Medalla maintained that the plaintiff became a
co-owner, not from the date of the donation but from the date of its
registration. Under the third special defense, it was also alleged that Medalla,
since July 1, 1931 had made important improvements on the portions of the
hacienda purchased by him and had, through his labor, efforts and sacrifices,
obtained for those portions a valuable sugar production quota for all of which
he had spent considerable sums of money.

The trial court overruled the above defenses except the second, which it
sustained. Under the second special defense, it was contended that the
plaintiff’s right of redemption, if ever he had had any, had expired. The
defendant and appellee, not satisfied with the lower court’s rejection of his
other defenses, reiterates them in this instance and urges that they be
considered, to which the appellant objects. Without passing on the legal
validity of the appellant’s objection, we shall take up only the question on
which the court below dismissed the suit. From our view of the case it is
unnecessary to touch on the other issues formulated by the appellee.

Article 1524 of the Civil Code reads:

“The right of legal redemption may not be exercised except within nine days,
counted from the inscription in the Registry, and, in the absence thereof, from
the time the redemptioner shall have had knowledge of the sale.

“The right of redemption of co-owners excludes that of adjacent
owners.”

The provision of this article (which fixes the period of nine days within
which the right of legal redemption may be exercised has not been repealed or
modified by the Code of Civil Procedure or the Rules of Court. The right of
legal redemption and the right to commence actions are entirely of different
nature. The first c is a substantive right which, in the absence of the article,
would lever exist? the second restricts the period in which the cause of action
may be asserted (Sempio vs. Del Rosario, 44 Phil., 1.)

There are other notable dissimilarities between legal redemption and legal
action which challenge any attempt to bring the former within the rule of the
statute of limitations which suspends the running of the period of prescription
during minority. An action is addressed to a court of justice; legal redemption
partakes of a recision of contract and is addressed to one of the contracting
parties by the other. An action may be brought only by persons not working under
any disability; legal redemption may, we believe, be exercised by a minor of
sufficient discretion; at any rate, his natural guardian or whoever has the
minor in his custody may validly make the repurchase in his behalf, (Guinto
vs. Lim Bonfing etc., 48 Phil. 884, 887.) An action seeks to assert a
fundamental, primary right of which the plaintiff has been unlawfully
deprived, or to redress a wrong which has been inflicted; legal redemption is in
the nature of a mere privilege created by law partly for reasons of public
policy and partly for the benefit and convenience of the redemptioner, to afford
him a way out of what might be a disagreeable or inconvenient association into
which he has been thrust.) (10 Manresa, 4th ed., 317.)

The law in prescribing certain contingencies as the starting point from which
the nine-day period should be counted, is to be presumed to exclude all
others. Exclusio unius est exclusio alterius. The starting
point; is registration or, in the absence of registration, knowledge of the
conveyance by the co-owners. It is logical to assume that if minority had been
contemplated, the law would have so expressly stated.) This is specially true in
a code which, unlike an ordinary statute, is framed with meticulous care and
thorough reflection. The role of minors in cases of legal redemption is too
conspicuous and perceptible to have been overlooked in the framing of article
1524. The onerous position of the purchaser and considerations of public
interest, we believe, forbade liberality as to time in favor of redemptioners;
hence the limitation cf the causes of extension to those factors (actual or
constructive notice) without which the exercise of the right of redemption would
n be possible. The shortness of the period fixed in the above article is itself
a safe index, in our opinion, of its peremptoriness and inflexibility.

The policy of the law with regard to the period of conventional redemption
(pacto de retro) furnishes the key to the scope of Article 1524 with
reference to the period for legal redemption. It is to be noted that legal
redemption and conventional redemption are of the same nature. The provisions
governing both are to be found in the same Chapter VI entitled “Resolution of
the Sale”; the same Title IV entitled “Contract of Purchase or Sale”; and the
same Book entitled “Obligations and Contracts,” all of the Civil Code. It is
also to be noted that the law fixes the duration of conventional redemption at
four years, in default of an express agreement, and at ten years the maximum
period beyond which the parties themselves may not agree. (Article 1508.) Now,
it would hardly be contended that a period of grace might be claimed by a vendor
with the right of repurchase or his successor by reason of mental disability or
non-age. Commenting on Article 1507 and 1509 of the Code, Manresa says:

“Ante todo, debemos notar que la cuestion del plazo, durante el cual puede
ejercitarse el derecho de retracto, esta undnimemente considerada como una
cuestion de interes publico. Ya Portalis observaba que no convenia a la
propiedad el estar por mucho tiempo sujeta a condiciones resolutorias de esta
indole. Por esta raztion, el sentido del Codigo es restrictivo y llmitativo,
debiendo resolverse con este criterio, en nuestra opinion, las dudas que puedan
ocurrir, pues tal criterio es, sin duda, el que mejor concuerda con el espiritu
de la ley.” (10 Man, 2nd ed., p. 302.)

Reasoning by analogy, the conclusion must be that the period of nine days
within which the right of legal redemption may be taken advantage of, counted
from the date of registration or, in the absence of registration, from the date
the redemptioner acquired knowledge of the sale, is absolute. In fact, there is
much stronger reason against relaxing the period in favor of a legal
redemptioner than in favor of a vendor with pacto de retro. In the
latter transaction, there is a contractual relation founded on valuable
consideration, a contract by which the party from whom the repurchase is sought
has been benefited. The right of legal redemption is a pure creature of the law,
regulated by law, and works only one way in favor of the redemptioner. Not
having parted with anything, the legal redemptioner can compel the purchaser to
sell but can not be compelled to buy.)

We do not believe that the framers of the Civil Code ever intended to
countenance a situation so unjust to one of the parties and prejudicial to
social interest. The construction of Article I524 which the plaintiff offers
would keep the property in a state of indivision even if one of the co-owners
wanted to separate. This is contrary to the express policy of the law that “No
co-owner shall be obliged to remain a party to the community, but each may, at
any time, demand partition of the thing held in common.” (Article 400, Civil
Code.) It would be extremely unfair to the purchaser and injurious to the public
welfare to keep in state of suspense, for possibly as long as 20 years’ or more,
what his co-owner might do when he becomes of age. While the uncertainty
continued the purchaser could not make any improvement on the property without
running the risk of losing his investments and the fruits of his labor.

The case of Wenceslao et al. vs. Calimo, Phil. 906, is obiter
dictum in so far as it insinuates or states that the period fixed in
article 1524 does not run against minors. But even if that decision had value as
a precedent, it co uld not serve as a pattern upon which to base judgment for
the plaintiff here. The dictum stressed the fact that the minors in that case
had no legal guardian. The present appellant not only had such a guardian but it
was this very guardian, Jose C. Villasor, who, as guardian of plaintiff’s
cousins and former co-owners, sold the lots in question to the
defendant-appellee. This guardian not only could have repurchased those lots for
the plaintiff within nine days but could have sold them, with the court’s
authority, directly to the plaintiff himself instead of to Medalla.

This brings home more eloquently than anything else can illustrate the
injustice which a prolonged period .for legal redemption would entail. Here, the
plaintiff would repurchase the lots nine years after the defendant bought them,
during which years, the latter claims, he has improved the property. To the
argument such as that advanced, that a purchaser does not have to improve the
property and need only reap its fruits, the answer is that not all lands are in
a condition of full productivity when purchased. Some require investments of
capital and toil to bring them into a state of usefullness.

The judgment of the lower court is affirmed with costs against the
appellant.

Moran, C.J., Paras, Feria, Pablo, Perfecto, and Bengzon,
JJ., concur.

BRIONES, M., conforme:

Convengo en la ponencia por el fundamento de que teniendo los menores tutor
legal cuando nacio el derecho de retracto bajo el articulo 1524 del Codigo
Civil, el plazo de nueva