G.R. No. L-25153. October 04, 1968
ANTONIO CLEMENTE, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. BERNARDINO PASCUA, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.
CONCEPCION, C.J.:
Appeal by defendant, Bernardino Pascua,
from a decision and a supplemental decision of the Court of First Instance of Isabela, ordering him to execute a deed conveying the
property in litigation to plaintiff, Antonio Clemente,
and to transfer to his name the corresponding tax declaration, as well as to
surrender to the court, within three (3) days from notice, the owner’s duplicate
of TCT No. T-16798 of Isabela, and sentencing Pascua to pay to Clemente the
following sums, namely; (1) P400, as attorney’s fees; (2) P400, as expenses of
litigation; (3) P200, as exemplary or corrective damages; (4) P30, for
certified true copies presented as exhibits; (5) P50, as nominal damages; (6)
P48.87, as docket and sheriff fees; and (7) double costs.
The subject-matter of this case is part of Lot No. 5463 of the
Santiago Cadaster, Province
of Isabela,
which lot has an area of 23.1749 hectares.
The lot originally belonged to Romualdo Gaffud, in whose favor OCT No. I-2174 of Isabela had been issued.
On May 5, 1940, Gaffud conditionally sold to Rosendo
Silverio – father-in-law of plaintiff Clemente – a portion of said lot, of about 16 hectares,
which had been in Clemente’s possession since
1939. On March 3, 1943, upon full payment of the stipulated price,
the corresponding deed of absolute sale – subsequently approved by the Secretary
of Agriculture and Natural Resources – in favor of Clemente,
was executed. The portion thus conveyed
was thereupon segregated – through subdivision plan Psd
21575, approved on September 30, 1947 – and designated as Lot No. 5463-A, with
an area of 15.9987 hectares. Clemente tried to register said deed of absolute sale with
the office of the Register of Deeds, but failed to accomplish his purpose,
seemingly, because of absence of the owner’s duplicate certificate of title,
which, Gaffud said, was in the possession of a
priest.
On July 11, 1949,
Gaffud executed, in favor of Gregorio Cachen, another deed of absolute sale of Lot No. 5463, for
the sum of P5,000. It turned out, later
on, that this sum had not been paid to Gaffud. Upon presentation of the deed of sale in
favor of Cachen and of the owner’s duplicate of OCT
No. I-2174, said certificate of title was, on December 1, 1949, cancelled and, in lieu thereof, TCT No.
T-1633 was issued, in the name of Cachen. The latter did not, however, take possession
of the land. On July 1, 1950 – or over
two (2) months after the death of Gaffud, on April
15, 1950 – Cachen instituted Civil Case No. 275 of
the Court of First Instance of Isabela, against Clemente, to obtain possession of said land, as its alleged
owner. Clemente
traversed this averment and affirmed that the land belongs to him, he having
acquired it from Gaffud; that he (Clemente)
had been in actual, open and uninterrupted possession thereof for over ten (10)
years before June 20, 1950; and that, if Cachen had
any transfer certificate of title in his name, he must have secured it
fraudulently, in bad faith and without any consideration.
After appropriate proceedings, said court rendered its decision, on June 24, 1953, holding
that the sale to Cachen was null and void for lack of
consideration, and that, having been first in securing possession of the land,
in good faith, Clemente has a better right thereto,
and, accordingly, dismissing Cachen’s complaint. On appeal taken by Cachen,
this decision was, on January 31, 1958,
affirmed in CA-G.R. No. 13737-R of the Court of Appeals. Cachen sought a review on certiorari of the latter’s decision in G.R. No. L-13673 of the
Supreme Court, which, on May 14, 1958, dismissed the petition for review, upon the
ground that it raised factual issues and lacked merit. The resolution of the Supreme Court to this
effect became final on October
13, 1958.
On January 19, 1962,
Clemente caused to be annotated on the back of TCT
No. T-1633, a notice of lis pendens stating that the land in question is under
litigation in Civil Case No. 275 of the Court of First Instance of Isabela, which had been appealed to the Court of Appeals in
CA-G.R. No. 13737-R and later brought to the Supreme Court in G.R. No.
L-13673. A little over a month later, or
on March 4, 1962, Cachen conveyed Lot No. 5463 to herein defendant,
Bernardino Pascua.
Upon registration of the deed of sale in his favor, on March 5, 1962, TCT No. T-1633, in the
name of Cachen, was cancelled and transfer
certificate of title No. T-16798, in the name of Pascua,
was issued, with the annotation of the notice of lis
pendens appearing on TCT No. T-1633. When Pascua sought
to take possession of the land, in 1963, he found that the tenants working
thereon had delivered the owner’s share of the harvest to Clemente,
who had secured the corresponding writ of possession, in said Civil Case No.
275. Thereupon, Pascua
filed therein a motion to set aside said writ, which was objected to by Clemente. Pascua, likewise, went to the Court of Agrarian Relations,
in CAR Case No. 55, and prayed therein that Clemente
and said tenants be required to deliver to him (Pascua)
the landowner’s share of the harvest, but the CAR suspended its proceedings
until the final resolution of the case at bar, which had, meanwhile,[1]
been commenced by Clemente, in the Court of First
Instance of Isabela, as Civil Case No. II-712
thereof, against Pascua, for the reconveyance
of Lot No. 5463-A and damages.
In his answer, defendant admitted, with some qualifications, most
of the allegations in plaintiff’s complaint.
As special defenses, defendant contested the venue and alleged lack of
cause of action, as well as pleaded the statute of limitations of actions. He, likewise, set up a counterclaim for
attorney’s fees, upon the ground that plaintiff’s complaint was malicious.
Plaintiff, in turn, filed
his answer to defendant’s counterclaim, denying the allegations thereof, and
then moved for a summary judgment, upon the ground that the defendant has not
raised any genuine issue of fact, since the allegations of fact made in his
answer to the complaint are belied by the decision of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. No. 13737-R, which is
already final and executory, and by an attestation of
the Provincial Assessor of Isabela and the
corresponding tax declaration, copies of which were attached to the
motion. Plaintiff, likewise, attached
thereto his affidavit of merit. Despite
defendant’s opposition to said motion, the same, was, after due hearing,
granted by the lower court, which, accordingly, rendered the appealed decision
ordering the defendant to convey the disputed lot to the plaintiff, to transfer
to his name the corresponding tax declaration and to surrender to the Court the
owner’s duplicate of TCT No. T-16798, as well as setting for hearing
plaintiff’s claim for damages. After the
reception of evidence thereon, said court, subsequently, rendered a
supplemental decision sentencing the defendant to pay damages, as set forth at
the beginning of this decision. Hence,
the present appeal by writ of error.
The issues calling for
our determination in this appeal are two-fold – one is procedural in nature and
the other concerns the merits of the case.
The first refers to the propriety of the summary judgment appealed
from, which is assailed upon the ground:
(1) that venue has been improperly laid; and (2) that there are
unsettled questions of fact.
As regards venue, defendant maintains that the land in question
is now within the jurisdiction of the Province
of Nueva Vizcaya. This pretense is, however, based exclusively
upon his own tax declaration, stating that said land is in Malasian, Municipality
of Diffun,
Nueva Vizcaya. Upon the other hand, it is not disputed that
the property in question is part of Lot 5463 of the Santiago
Cadaster, Isabela;
that it was covered by OCT No. I-2174 of the same province, in the name
of Gaffud; that, upon cancellation thereof, it was
substituted by TCT No. T-1633 of Isabela, in
the name of Cachen, or defendant’s predecessor in
interest; and that, upon the sale of said lot to defendant, this TCT No. T-1633
of Isabela was superseded by TCT No. T-16798 of
Isabela, in his (defendant’s) name. Moreover, it is alleged in paragraph 2 of the
complaint herein that said property is “situated in the Barrio of Luna
(formerly Malasian), Municipality of Santiago, Isabela“, and this allegation was impliedly
admitted in paragraph 2 of defendant’s answer.
Obviously, this admission and the foregoing facts and circumstances
far outweigh defendant’s self-serving tax declaration. In Urmaneta v. Manzano,[2]
this Court held:
“There was really no genuine issue of fact. If there is, the same was easily determinable
from the pleadings and documents attached thereto; hence, the trial court
correctly rendered the summary judgment on said pleadings and documents.”
Let us now consider defendant’s allegation to the effect that
“there are issues of fact which should be threshed out in a trial on the
merits.” In this connection, plaintiff alleged in his complaint herein
that, “by virtue of” the “decision of the Court of Appeals in
CA-G.R. No. 13737-R (Civil Case No. 275, Isabela)
copy of which is hereto attached” and the “resolution of the Supreme
Court in Case No. G.R. No. L-13673, dismissing the petition for review by certiorari of said decision,” he
had been “declared as owner” of the lot in question; that,
“pending final decision in said case,” he had caused the
aforementioned “notice of lis pendens” to be “annotated on TCT No.
T-1633 issued in the name of Gregorio Cachen“;
that, despite said notice of lis pendens and “with full knowledge of the
same,” defendant acquired said lot and secured a new TCT thereto, which
“carried” the annotation of lis pendens appearing on the cancelled TCT No. T-1633;
that, “despite x x x repeated
demands”, defendant failed and refused to reconvey
said land to the plaintiff; and that, as a consequence, plaintiff had been
constrained to bring this action, thereby incurring in expenses for attorney’s
fees and costs.
Except as regards the last allegation, as to which defendant
claimed to have “no knowledge nor information as to the truth”
thereof, the facts alleged in the complaint were admitted by the defendant,
although he denied that plaintiff herein had been declared, in the previous case, owner of the lot in dispute, and asserted
that the only question posed and decided in said case was the right to the
possession of said lot. The issue thus
raised by defendant herein – whether or not the title to said lot had been settled
in the previous case – is entirely dependent, for its resolution, upon the
interpretation of the decisions rendered in said case. Hence, said issue, like that of prescription
of action – which is no longer pressed by the defendant – and that of alleged
lack of cause of action in plaintiff’s favor, is a question purely of law, not
of fact. In short, “there is no
genuine issue as to any material fact and x x x the
moving party” was “entitled to a judgment as a matter of law,”
so that the lower court did not err in rendering a summary judgment.[3]
Defendant insists that
since the previous litigation was merely an accion
publiciana, which hinged on the right of possession,
the decision dismissing the complaint therein did not settle the title to the
property in dispute. Both parties, in
that case, however, based their respective right of possession upon their
alleged title as owner of said property, resulting from the two (2) sales made
by Gaffud, the first to plaintiff herein, and the
second, several years later, to herein defendant’s predecessor in interest,
Gregorio Cachen.
In order to decide the case, the Court was constrained, therefore, to
pass upon the question of ownership. In
doing so, the lower court rejected the claim of Cachen,
stating that the sale in his favor was “null and void for want of
consideration.” Similarly, in its decision, the Court of Appeals
explicitly declared:
“In view of the mounting evidence on record showing that
Gregorio Cachen has not paid the consideration of
the sale; that he (h)as not taken possession of the land; that he has not
declared the property in his name for taxation purposes; that prior to the
execution of the deed of sale in his favor, to wit, on July 7, 1949, Andres
Castillo, a brother in law of Gaffud, told Cachen in the presence of the latter’s brother-in-law and Gaffud that the latter could not sell a portion of about 16
hectares of the land, because that much had already been sold by Gaffud to Antonio Clemente, the
defendant herein; and that notwithstanding his knowledge of the flaw and defect
of the title of his vendor, he entered into the transaction, it is evident
that Cachen was not an innocent purchaser of title
No. T-1633 in his name, did not give him any right to the property
superior and paramount to those of defendant who, indisputably, and in all
respects, has acted in good faith and has paid valuable consideration, and has been in possession of the land long before
the plaintiff acquired a claim over the same.
Whatever right the plaintiff may have acquired over the land by virtue
of the deed of sale executed in his favor is subordinated to the rights of the
defendant. And if the plaintiff is
declared to have a right over that portion of about 16 hectares paramount to
the rights of the defendant, the prejudice to the latter is obviously
manifest. In the clash of rights
between an innocent purchaser for value and one whose claim is tainted with bad
faith and with knowledge of the defect of the title of his grantor, the answer
is not difficult to find.
“We, therefore,
declare that Antonio Clemente is the absolute
owner of the land described as Lot 5463-A of the subdivision plan Psd-21575
with an area of 15.9987 hectares which is a part of the land described in
transfer certificate of title No. T-1633 of the province
of Isabela,
and he is entitled to the possession thereof.
The decision of the trial court dismissing the complaint is hereby
affirmed. Costs is taxed against the
plaintiff-appellant.”
In other words, the complaint in the previous case was dismissed
upon the ground that, as the first buyer who took possession of the lot in
question, in good faith, plaintiff herein had become the absolute owner of said
lot, and that, as such, he had a better right to its possession than Cachen, who had bought it in bad faith, apart from the fact
that the sale in his (Cachen’s) favor is null and
void.
Upon the other hand, since defendant herein was, in view of the
notice of lis pendens,
aware of the proceedings in the previous case, when he purchased the lot in
question from Cachen, it follows that he (defendant)
cannot invoke the rights of a purchaser in good faith of a registered land and
has acquired no more rights than those of Cachen, who
had none.
WHEREFORE,
the decision appealed from should be, as it is hereby affirmed, with costs.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Reyes, J.B.L., Makalintal, Sanchez,
Castro, Angeles, Fernando, and Capistrano,
JJ., concur.
Dizon and Zaldivar, JJ.,
did not take part.
[1]
On July 16, 1963.
[2]
L-17478, February 28, 1962.
[3]
Section 3 of Rule 34, Rules of Court; Ibañez v. North Negros
Sugar Co., L-6790, March 28, 1955;
Phil. Nat. Bank v. Phil. Leather Co.,
105 Phil. 400; Go Leting & Sons v. Leyte Land
Transportation, L-8887, May 28, 1958.