URBANO CASILLAN, PETITIONER AND APPELLEE, VS. FRANCISCA E. VDA. DE ESPARTERO, ET AL., OPPOSITORS AND APPELLANTS.

On December 19, 1950, Urbano Casillan filed a verified petition in
the Court of First Instance of Cagayan in Cadastral Case No. 26, Record
No. 2, G.L.R.O. No. 1390, alleging that he was the owner of lot No.
1380, filed a claim therefor in said case and paid all cadastral costs,
but that by mistake title was issued to Victorino Espartero, who never
possessed or laid claim to the said lot. Petitioner, therefore, prayed
that “in the interest of equity and under section 112 of Act 496,” the
court order the heirs of Victorino Espartero—the latter having already
died—to reconvey the lot to the petitioner, or merely order the
correction of the certificate of title by substituting his name for
that of Victorino Espartero as registered owner.

Opposing the petition, the heirs of Victorino Espartero filed a
motion to dismiss on the ground, among others, that section 112 of Act
496 did not authorize the reconveyance or substitution sought by
petitioner; but the court declared the section applicable. And having
found, after hearing, that the lot belonged to petitioner and that
title thereto was issued in the name of Victorino Espartero as a
consequence of a clerical error in the preparation of the decree of
registration, the court ordered the reconveyance prayed for. From this
order, oppositors have appealed to this court and one of the questions
raised is that section 112 of Act 496 did not authorize the lower court
to order such reconveyance.

Stated another way, appellants’ position is that the Court of First
Instance, in the exercise of its jurisdiction as a land registration
court, had no authority to order a reconveyance in the present case.
The appeal thus raises a question of jurisdiction.

In view of our decision in the case of Director of Lands vs.
Register of Deeds et al., 49 Off. Gaz., No. 3, p. 935, appellants’
contention must be upheld. In that case, the court of land registration
had confirmed title in the Government of the Philippine Islands to a
parcel of land situated in Malabon, Rizal, but the corresponding decree
and certificate of title were issued, not in the name of the Philippine
Government, but in that of the municipality of Malabon. Years after,
the Director of Lands filed in the original land registration case a
petition for an order to have the error corrected and the certificate
of title put in the name of the Republic of the Philippines. Acting on
the petition, the Court of First Instance of Rizal issued the order
prayed for on the authority of section 112 of the Land Registration
Act. But upon appeal to this Court, the order was reversed, this Court
holding that the lower court, as a land court, had no jurisdiction to
issue such order, as the section cited did not apply to the case.
Elaborating on the scope of said section, this Court said:

“Roughly, section 112, on which the Director of
Lands relies and the order is planted, authorizes, in our opinion, only
alterations which do not impair rights recorded in the decree, or
alterations which, if they do prejudice such rights, are consented to
by all the parties concerned, or alterations to correct obvious
mistakes. By the very fact of its indefeasibility, the Court of Land
Registration after one year loses its competence to revoke or modify in
a substantial manner a decree against the objection of any of the
parties adversely affected. Section 112 itself gives notice that it
shall not be construed to give the court authority to open the original
decree of registration and section 38, which sanctions the opening of
a decree within one year from the date of its entry, for fraud,
provides that after that period ‘every decree or certificate of title
issued in accordance with this section shall be incontrovertible.’

“Under
the guise of correcting clerical errors, the procedure here followed
and the appealed order were virtual revision and nullification of
generation-old decree and certificate of title. Such procedure and such
order strike at the very foundation of the Torrens System of land
recording laid and consecrated by the emphatic provisions of section 38
and 112 of the Land Registration Act, supra. In consonance with the
university-recognized principles which underlie Act No. 496, the court
may not, even if it is convinced that a clerical mistake was made,
recall a certificate of title after the lapse of nearly 30 years from
the date of its issuance, against the vigorous objection of its holder.
As was said in a similar but much weaker case than this (Government vs.
Judge, etc., 57 Phil., 500): “To hold that the substitution of the name
of a person, by subsequent decree, for the name of another person to
whom a certificate of title was issued (five years before) in pursuance
of a decree, effects only a correction of a clerical error and that the
court had jurisdiction to do it, requires a greater stretch of the
imagination than is permissible in a court of justice, (Syllabus.) It
should be noticed that in that case, as in this case, the later decree
‘was based on the hypothesis that the decree of May 14, 1925, contained
a clerical error and that the court had jurisdiction to correct such
error in the manner aforesaid.

“The sole remedy of the land
owner whose property has been wrongfully or erroneously registered in
another’s name is, after one year from the date of the decree, not to
set aside the decree as was done in the instant case, but respecting
the decree as in- controvertible and no longer open to review, but to
bring an ordinary action in the ordinary court of justice for
reconveyance or, if the property has passed into the hands of an
innocent purchaser for value, for damages.”

In line with the ruling laid down in the case cited, the order
herein appealed from must be, as it is hereby, revoked, without
prejudice to the filing of an ordinary action in the ordinary courts of
justice for reconveyance, or for damages if the property has passed
into the hands of an innocent purchaser for value. Without costs.

Paras, C.J., Pablo, Bengzon, Padilla, Montemayor, Jugo, Bautista Angelo, Concepcion, and Reyes, J.B.L., JJ., concur.