JAMES MCI. HENDERSON, PHILIPPINE ALIEN PROPERTY ADMINISTRATOR, AND THE NATIONAL RUBBER GOODS, MANUFACTURING CO., INC., PETITIONERS, VS. BIENVENIDO A. TAN, JUDGE OF THE COURT OF …

The National Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company, Inc. is a
Philippine corporation with a capital stock of P1,000,000 divided into
shares of the par value of P100 each. As 4,619 of those shares were
Japanese-owned, the Philippine Alien Property Administrator, as the
official designated by the President of the United States to hold and
administer enemy properties located in the Philippines, took title to
the said shares by virtue of Vesting Order No. P-62 issued on March
20,1947 , and having thereby become the owner of 72 percent of the
subscribed capital stock of the company, also undertook the management
and control of its affairs and assets.

On June 24, 1947, the herein respondent Joseph.Arcache is claiming
to be the mortgage creditor of the company in the sum of P70,000 by
virtue of a deed of mortgage purporting to have been constituted on
September 24, 1942, on 19 parcels of registered company land situated
in Rizal city, instituted an action in the Court of First Instance of
Rizal for the foreclosure of said mortgage. Neither the Philippine
Alien Property Administrator nor the company received personal notice
of this action, but following summons by publication and the lapse of
the reglementary period for filing an answer, the company w|s declared
in default and on October 2, 1947, judgment was rendered against it and
in favor of Joseph Arcache for the amount of the mortgage debt and
interests and for the sale of the mortgaged property, but with the
following proviso:

“In view however, of the executive order regarding
moratorium, which orders a suspension of the payment for all monetary
obligations incurred after December 8, 1941, but before the liberation
of the Philippines, it is hereby ordered that no execution shall issue
in this case until after ninety (90) days from the lifting of said
executive order.”

Though notified of the above,judgment the Philippine Alien Property
Administrator took no steps to question the same, the said officer not
being then aware of any facts that could be set up as a defense against
the mortgage, with the result that the judgment became final in due
time. This was the status of the case when on March 15, 1949, Joseph
Arcache, without notice to the company or to the Philippine Alien
Property Administrator, filed a motion for the lifting of that portion
of the judgment which suspended its, execution until after 90 days from
the lifting of the executive order on moratorium, alleging as a ground
for said motion that (1) the defense of moratorium had been waived by
the company by reason of its failure to invoke the same; (2) the
mortgaged properties had been abandoned by the company; (3) the said
properties were delinquent in the payment of taxes; and (4) the company
was not entitled to the benefits of the Moratorium Law (Republic Act
No. 342) for the reason that the said law was intended to be for the
benefit of debtors who intended to pay and not for those who had no
such intention. No one having appeared at the hearing to oppose the
motion, despite notice thereof by publication, the court by its order
dated May 9, 1949, granted the motion and authorized the sale of the
mortgaged properties for the satisfaction of the mortgage debt.
Pursuant to this order the mortgaged properties were auctioned by the
sheriff and awarded to Joseph Arcache as the highest bidder, the
corresponding sheriff’s deed of sale having been subsequently executed
in his favor and confirmed by the court on June 30, 1949.

Though notice of the hearing of Arcache1s motion to lift the
moratorium clause in the judgment was made by publication, the
Philippine Alien Property Administration never had actual knowledge of
said motion or hearing, nor of the order of May 9, 1949, and the sale
of the mortgaged properties to Arcache, and only came to know of
these matters on July 6, 1949, when one of his employees happened to go
to the Office of the Register of Deeds of Rizal City in connection with
some other business and there learned that Arcache had presented for
registration in said office the sheriff’s deed of sale covering the
mortgaged properties. Following this discovery the company and the
Philippine Alien Property Administrator filed a petition to have the
said order of May 9, 1949, and the sale of the mortgaged properties
declared void. But as the petition did not proper, they came to this
Court with a petition for certiorari to have the order of May 9, 1949,
and the proceedings taken thereunder declared null and void.

The main question for determination is whether the court may by an
interlocutory order change its judgment after the same has already
become final. As a general rule, unless control over itv has been
retained in some proper manner, or a statute otherwise provides, no
judgment can be amended after it has become final, except as to
clerical errors or misprisions. As stated by Freeman in his book on
Judgments (5th ed., par. 141, p. 269) ; “The power of courts to correct
clerical errors and misprisions and to make the record speak the truth
by nunc pro lunc amendments after the term does not enable
them to change their judgments in substance or in any material respect.
* * * Consequently it is well settled that, in the absence of statute
permitting it, the law does not authorize the correction of judicial
errors, however flagrant and glaring they may be, under the pretense
of correcting clerical errors. To entitle a party to an order amending a
judgment, order, or decree, ordinarily, he must establish that the
entry as made does not conform to what the court ordered.”

It is obvious that the lower court has not merely corrected a
clerical error, for the inclusion of the moratorium clause in the
judgment must have been a deliberate act calculated to produce its
intended effect, which was to suspend the execution of the judgment.
The error may be one of law, but it. cannot by any means be considered
clerical. And the correction may not be justified on the ground that
its purpose was merely to give due course to the judgment as the court
alleges. If the judgment could not under its terms be executed until
the lifting of the moratorium, it would not be giving it due course to
change its terms by deleting the clause that prevented its execution.

It is, however, urged that the part of the judgment referring to
moratorium which was lifted by the court below did not in reality
constitute a part of said judgment for the question of moratorium had
not been raised in the case. This is an assertion which flies In the
face of facts, for it clearly appears that the moratorium clause in the
judgment forms a material and substantial part thereof. And even
conceding that it was an error for the trial court to embody such a
clause in its judgment because, as the respondent Arcache alleges, the
defense of moratorium had not been raised and that the debtor
corporation was not entitled to it because it had no intention to pay
the debt, that error should have been corrected by appeal and not by
recourse to the power of the court to correct clerical errors or
misprisions. As Freeman says in his book already cited, the failure of
the court to render judgment according to law must not be treated as a
clerical misprision (par. 142, page 277), and the rule applies whether
the correction consists in introducing something which ought not to be
there, (par. 145, page 281), and judgments upon default are governed by
the same rules in this respect as judgment rendered after an error or
trial (par. 159, page 311).

It follows that the lower court had no power to excise the
moratorium clause from its judgment in the way it did after the
judgment had become final. Such an act was in excess of its
jurisdiction and could, therefore, be corrected by certiorari. (Section
1, Rule 67, Rules of Court; II Moran, Comments on the Rules of Court,
Second Revised Edition, p. 123.)

In view of the foregoing, the order of May 9, 1949 and the
consequent proceedings had thereafter are hereby declared void,
including the order confirming the deed of sale med in favor of
respondent Arcache. With costs against the said respondent.

Moran, C.J., Ozaeta, Paras, Pablo, Bengzon, Tuason, and Montemayor, JJ., concur.