PEDRO DIMASACAT AND ERNESTO ROBLES, PETITIONERS, VS. THE COURT OF APPEALS, PHILIPPINE NATIONAL BANK AND RAFAEL O. LAGDAMEO, RESPONDENTS.

Petition for review of a decision of the Court
of Appeals revers­ing that of the Court of First Instance of Quezon.

Rafael O. Lagdameo was the registered owner of four (4) conti­guous
parcels of land, with an aggregate area of about 7, 236 sq. m., situated in the
poblacion of Tagkawayan, Quezon, and covered by TCT No. 17011 of the Office of
the Register of Deeds of said province. 
On June 24, 1946, he mortgaged said land, for P3, 500, to the Philip­pine
National Bank, subject to the latter’s right of extrajudicial fore­closure
should he default in the payment of said amount.  The corres­ponding deed of mortgage was duly
registered and annotated on said TCT No. 17011. 
A little over a year later, or on September 12, 1947, Lagdameo sold to petitioner Ernesto Robles,
a portion of about 260 sq. m. of the aforementioned land, for the sum of P1,040.  Still later, or
on March 6, 1948, Lagdameo
sold to Pedro Dimasacat, the other petitioner herein, another portion, of about
381.44 sq. m., of the same land, for the sum of P1,100.  The notarial deeds attesting to these sales
were not registered.  Owing to
non-payment of the debt to the Bank, the mortgage was, on April 1, 1955, foreclosed extra-judicially and
sold at public auction, by the Provincial Sheriff of Que­zon, to the Bank for
the amount of said indebtedness.  On June
11, 1956, or after the lapse of the statutory period of one-year for the
redemption of the property, the
Sheriff executed the corresponding deed of absolute sale to the Bank, in favor
of which TCT No. 24761 was issued, upon registration of said deed of absolute
sale and the cancellation of TCT No. 17011.

Prior to the expiration of said period of redemption, or some­time
before November, 1955, Robles and Dimasacat urged Lagdameo to repurchase the
land to prevent it, particularly the portions sold to them, from becoming
property of the Bank, but Lagdameo told them that he would effect the
redemption at any time he had money therefor. Thereupon, Robles and Dimasacat
offered to repurchase the property from the Bank, which rejected the
offer.  Thereupon, or on December 5, 1955, Dimasacat and
Robles – hereinafter referred to as the plaintiffs – commenced Civil Case No.
33-G of the Court of First Instance of Quezon, against Lagdameo and the Bank,
for the purpose of enforcing their alleged right to
repurchase said property.  On December 7, 1955, plaintiffs,
likewise, caused a notice of lis pendens to be registered and
annotated on the back of TCT No. 17011. 
Lagdameo and the Bank were summoned on March 23 and 27, 1956,
respectively, or before the expiration of the aforementioned period of
redemption.  TCT No. 24761, subsequently
issued in the name of the Bank, carried the notice of lis pendens
annotated on TCT No. 17011.

After appropriate proceedings, said Court of First Instance
rendered a decision, dated April 1, 1960, dismissing plaintiffs’ com­plaint and
declaring them “without right to repurchase the properties they allegedly
acquired from x x x Lagdameo, x x x but reserving to them x x x the right to
file suit against” him “to compel performance of their
agreement,” should he eventually reacquire said properties.

On appeal, taken by plaintiffs, this decision was
“reversed” by the Court of Appeals, which held them “to have the
right to redeem their respective portions from the Bank,” although
“the question as to who should be entitled to repurchase the totality of
the lots from the Bank” was “reserved for future litigation, if need
be, between all the parties.” Plaintiffs now seek a review by certiorari
of this decision of the Court of Appeals, and pray that said decision be
“re­versed x x x by allowing” them “to redeem x x x all the
parcels of land” covered by the certificates of title aforementioned,
“for the sum of P3,500 x x x plus interest of 1% a month from April 1, 1955 to
the filing of the present complaint on December 5, 1955.”

Plaintiffs maintain that, having been held by the Court of Ap­peals
to be “successors in interest of the mortgage debtor, in part of the
property and x x x therefore qualified to redeem, ” said Court should have
declared them entitled to repurchase the entirety of said property, in line
with Magno v. Viola^[1],
instead of limiting their right of redemption to the portions sold by Lagdameo
to each of them.

Such was not, however, the issue decided in the Magno case, al­though
it was declared therein that a lawyer who, by reason of his con­tract of
retainer with a former client, had an interest in a land belonging to the
latter, may be considered his successor in interest in said land, within the
purview of Section 464 of our former Code of Civil Procedure^[2],
which is substantially identical to Section 29 of Rule 39 of the Rules of Court^[3].

It is true that our decision in said case made reference to some
American cases in which it was held that “one who owns a separate part of
the land sold” at public auction “or has some interest therein,”
or “successors in part” of said land “could not redeem at all,
except by redeeming the whole,” but this was not the question adjudicated
in that case. On the contrary, it was held therein that said lawyer or his
assignee, “had no right to redeem the shares of his former
clients” in the land in question, the buyer of said shares being “a
part owner” of said land.

Moreover, the decision in
the Magno case, likewise, pointed out that, although a “cotenant
may redeem the entire joint estate x x x in so doing he will be deemed to
have acted for the benefit of all the cotenants.” This point is
particularly relevant to the case at bar, for plaintiffs had bought merely
small portions of the land of Lagdameo and had, at best, a personal right to
demand from him a status of co-ownership over said property, because the deeds
of sale in their favor had not been registered, and the portions covered by
said deeds had not been surveyed, so that the precise boundaries thereof had
not been delimited by metes and bounds, much less segregated from the mass of Lagdameo’s property covered by
TCT No. 17011 and then by TCT No. 24761. 
Hence, even if plaintiffs had succeeded in redeeming the whole land,
Lagdameo could have, under said dictum in the Magno case, asserted the right to
repurchase from them so much of the land as was not included in said deeds of
sale in their favor.  Indeed, this was
reckoned in plaintiffs’ complaint, for they prayed therein that, should they be
“able to repurchase the parcels of land covered by TCT No. 17011,”
judgment be rendered “declaring them co-owners of the portions that
remain, after deducting the portions” covered by said deeds of sale
“subject to the right of defendant Rafael O. Lagda­meo or his successor in
interest as redemptioner.”

In this connection, it appears that, by virtue of another deed of
sale, dated July 22, 1962 – or while this case was pending in the Court of
Appeals – Lagdameo had repurchased the land from the Bank, for P7, 044.74,
subject to the conditions set forth in said instrument, par­ticularly the
notice of lis pendens annotated on the back,
first of TCT No. 17011, and later of TCT No. 24761.  Inasmuch as, even if plaintiffs had managed
to redeem the whole property, so much thereof as exceeded the portions sold to
them by Lagdameo could have been re­purchased from them by Lagdameo and the
title to said property, has meanwhile reverted fully to the latter, it follows
that petitioners are now entitled to no more than the consummation of the sales
made by him in their favor.

WHEREFORE, the decision of the Court of Appeals should be,
as it is hereby modified, in the sense that plaintiffs herein are here­by
declared co-owners of the land in question to the extent of the in­terest
conveyed to them by defendant Rafael O. Lagdameo, subject to their right to
partition said property and determine the precise boun­daries of the share or
portion belonging to each, without pronounce­ment as to costs.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Reyes, J.B.L., Dizon, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Sanchez, Castro,
Fernando, Capistrano, Teehankee, and
Barredo, JJ., concur.

^[1]
61 Phil. 80, 85.

^[2]
Act No. 190.

^[3]
“Who may redeem real property so sold.  – Real property sold as provided in the last
preceding section, or any part thereof sold se­parately, may be redeemed in the
manner hereinafter provided, by the following persons:

“(a)   The judgment debtor, or his successor in
interest in the whole or any part of the property;

“(b)   A creditor having a lien by attachment,
judgment or mortgage on the property sold, or on some part thereof, subsequent
to the judg­ment under which the property was sold.  Such redeeming creditor is termed a
redemptioner.”