MAXIMO ACIERTO, GABRIEL ALEGRE, ET AL., PETITIONERS AND APPELLANTS, VS. VICTORINA G. DE LAPERAL, ASSISTED BY HER HUSBAND ROBERTO LAPERAL, RESPONDENTS AND APPELLEES. CONSORCIA B.…

Appeal from an order of the Manila court of first instance which,
denying petitioners’ motion for continuance, declared their appeal from
the Manila municipal court to have been abandoned.

In said inferior court, petitioners had sued respondents to compel
acceptance of the monthly rentals for portions of respondents’ land in
Tondo, Manila, which the former occupied. They offered to deposit such
rentals from December 1958 until the court shall have fixed a longer
period for their verbal contracts of lease of such portions (which
contracts were on a month-to-month basis).

Respondents had refused to accept such rentals because they desired
to eject petitioners and had so notified them for the purpose of
constructing on the land their own building, the plans of which had
been prepared. Accordingly, the answered praying for ejectment and
other allied remedies.

The municipal court, after hearing, ordered petitioners to vacate
the premises and to pay monthly rents at the specified rate from
December, 1958 until actual vacation.

After perfection of their appeal from such order, the Manila court
of first instance set the case for hearing1 on June 2,1959. However, on
May 29,1959, their counsel filed a motion for postponement. And on June
2 neither counsel nor petitioners appeared. The court denied the
request for postponement and consequently declared the appeal abandoned
for failure to appear. Reconsideration of said order having been
refused, petitioners took this appeal, raising three issues, two of
which have already been resolved by this Court in Acierto vs. Laperal, 107 Phil., 1088.

The sole question now remaining is whether petitioners’ motion for postponement should have been granted.

Bearing in mind the adverse party’s apparently well-founded claim
that the postponement was a mere dilatory expedient to prolong the
tenants’ possession of the premises, we find, under the circumstances,
no inclination to impute abuse of discretion in the refusal to
postpone. Furthermore, the alleged reason for postponement was
counsel’s previously scheduled trial in Castillejos, Zambales. And yet
there were no supporting papers to prove this ground, the motion not
being, additionally, under oath.^[1]
Such motion was not even scheduled for submission to the court before
the day set for trial; and on such day none appeared for petitioners,
evidently (but erroneously) on the assumption that postponement would
be ordered.^[2] And petitioner’s motion for reconsideration—which was, in effect, a motion for relief—attached no affidavit of merit.

Indeed, petitioners do not exhibit any meritorious defense against
respondents’ legitimate action for ejectment. Their lease contracts
with respondents were from month to month. Necessarily, the contracts
expired at the end of every month^[3] without need of special demand.^[4]
But because petitioners had occupied the premises for more than a year,
respondents gave them more than three months’ notice to vacate. This
was not unreasonable in the circumstances.

Wherefore, the appealed order should be affirmed, and it is hereby affirmed, with costs against petitioners.

Padilla, Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Concepcion, Reyes, J. B. L., Barrera, Paredes, Dizon, Regala and Makalintal, JJ., concur.

^[2] Vaswani vs. Tarachand, G. R. No. L-15800 Dec. 29, 1960; Ortube vs. Asuncion, G. R. No. L-15813, Dec. 29, 1960.

^[3] Art. 1687, New Civil Code.

^[4] Estrella vs. Sangalang, 76 Phil. 108; Buhay vs. Cobarrubias, 76 Phil. 213; Villanueva vs. Canlas, 77 Phil. 381.