MANOCUB SALAZAR, PETITIONER, VS. THE COURT OF APPEALS AND EDILBERTO MENDOZA ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

From the findings of fact made by said court, which for the
purposes of the appeal must be deemed conclusive, it appears that
towards the end of 1945 the appellee, who held a parcel of land
alongside Manday creek in Cotabato, Cotabato, by virtue of a lease
granted to his deceased wife by the Bureau of Lands, allowed the
appellant to construct a building on it with the understanding that
one-half of the building would belong to one of them and the other half
to the other. But while the construction of the building was going on,
the provincial governor of Cotabato issued an order that no lease of
public lands along the banks of the Manday creek would be approved or
revived, and sensing that this opened the way for an attack oh
appellee’s title, appellant “filed his own application for the lease of
the land he had occupied, denounced plaintiff for subletting the land to
him without the prior approval of the Secretary of Agriculture and
Commerce, and demanded an investigation and a ruling that the land be
declared open for lease.” After the building was finished and let to a
tenant, the appellee demanded rent for his half of the building, only to
be informed that appellant had already collected the rent in advance.
Considering this a violation of appellant’s agreement with him, the
appellee filed suit for ejectment in the justice of the peace court,
and when that suit was dismissed for want of jurisdiction, he brought
the present action in the Court of First Instance, “not to enforce the
agreement, but to recover rents on the lot occupied by the defendant’s
building.” Appellant contested the action but lost, for judgment was
rendered ordering him to pay to plaintiff, as administrator of the
estate of his deceased wife, the rents fixed by the court for the
occupancy of the land in question. On appeal to the Court of Appeals
the judgment was affirmed, except as to the duration of the sublease,
which was modified.

The question for determination in this appeal is whether appellant
should be upheld in his contention that the appellee had no right to
the rents because the lease under which he held the land was voided
when he sublet the land to the appellee without the approval of the
Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce. In support of his contention
appellant cites Section 40 of Commonwealth Act 141, which reads:

“Sec. 40. The lessee shall not assign, encumber, or
sublet his rights without the consent of the Secretary of Agriculture
and Commerce, and the violation of this condition shall avoid
the contract: Provided, That assignment, encumbrance or subletting for purposes of speculation shall not be permitted in any case: Provided, further,
That nothing contained in this section shall be understood or construed
to permit the assignment, encumbrance, or subletting of lands leased
under this Act, or under any previous Act, to persons, corporations, or
associations which under this Act, are not authorized to lease public
lands.”

After reading the whole Act we agree with the Court of Appeals that
this provision does not apply to the land under consideration. The Act
provides for the administration and disposition of certain lands of the
public domain, which for that purpose are classified into (a) agricultural, (b) residential, commercial, industrial or for similar productive purposes, (c) educational, charitable or other similar purposes,and (d)
reservations for town sites and for public and quasi-public uses. Each
class is governed by separate and specific provisions grouped under
separate titles. Class (a) comes under Title II, class (b) under Title III, class (c) under Title IV, and class (d) under Title V. The general provisions applicable to all of the classes are placed under title VI.

The land here in question not being, according to the Court of
Appeals, agricultural but residential, the same falls under Title III.
This title enumerates the conditions to which leases of lands of this
kind should be made subject, but it contains no prohibition against
sublease, much less any provision that the subleasing of the land
without the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce would
render the lease void. On the other hand, we find the prohibition
against sublease embodied not only in Title II, which governs
agricultural lands, but also in Title IV, which covers lands for
educational, charitable and other similar purposes. The inference is,
we think, clear that no such prohibition was intended for lands falling
under Title III. The Court of Appeals did not, therefore, err in
overruling appellant’s contention that the prohibition against sublease
also applied to the land in question.

The foregoing sufficiently disposes of the issue presented by the
appeal. But we may add that appellant is hardly the person to question
the validity of appellee’s title or right to the land. As this Court
has once said, “when a grant of land is made by the Government, the
question of its validity is a matter between the grantor and the
grantee, and unless the point is raised by the Government and the grant
is set aside, a third person can not question the legality of the
concession.” (Maninang vs. Consolacion, 12 Phil. 342). And
applicable here is also the rule that “a person who rents a property
from another is not permitted to deny the latter’s title at the time
the lease begun.” (Sec. 68 [b], Rule 123, Rules of Court; III
Koran’s Comments on the Rules of Court, p. 463.) These are sound
principles which give validity to the following pronouncement of the
court below:

“The appellant first entered into an agreement with
the plaintiff, securing the latter’s consent to construct a building on
the land in question. But once he had finished his building, he turned
against his lessor, and on flimsy excuse of a directive of doubtful
applicability,that leases along the banks of the Manday Creek, on which
the land is found, shall not be revived or granted, he sought to obtain
the annulment or revocation of his lessor’s right of lease, and later
applied for the lease of the land himself in his own name. No court of
justice can tolerate such a double dealing; it merits censure and
condemnation.”

The decision appealed from is, therefore, affirmed, with costs against the appellant.

Ozaeta, Paras, Feria, Pablo, Bengzon, Tuason, and Montemayor, JJ., concur.

Moran, C.J., in the result.