ADRIANO ANTONIO, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. BENJAMIN JALANDONI AND MANUEL PLANA, DEFENDANTS AND APPELLEES.

Antonio versus Jalandoni

The Case

This is an appeal by Adriano Antonio against Benjamin Jalandoni and Manuel Plana from an order of dismissal rendered by the Court of First Instance of Iloilo. The plaintiff below sued to recover a parcel of land, and the defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that the claim was already barred by a prior judgment. The case matters because it teaches the exact reach of the plea of res judicata — the rule that a final judgment bars a later action — and shows that the three requisites of that plea must each be present in full, so that a partial overlap in the land claimed does not justify throwing out the entire complaint.

Procedural History

The plaintiff first filed a complaint against the same defendants in the Court of First Instance of Iloilo, docketed there as Civil Case No. 4172, seeking recovery of lot No. 8119 of the Passi Cadastre. At the trial of that first case, after the defendants had filed their answers, neither the plaintiff nor his lawyer appeared, deliberately as they later claimed, and the court dismissed the complaint forthwith.

The plaintiff then filed the present action, docketed as Civil Case No. 4743 of the same court. The defendants again moved to dismiss, this time on the ground that the complaint was barred by prior judgment, and the trial court granted the motion by order dated October 25, 1960. From that order of dismissal the plaintiff appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which decided the case on July 31, 1965.

Facts

The dispute concerns land along the Jalaud River. In the first case the plaintiff alleged that lot No. 8119 of the Passi Cadastre was formerly submerged, being then part of the bed of the river; that in 1954 the river changed its course, leaving the area dry and making it an accretion to lot No. 564 of the Dueñas cadastre, which belonged to the plaintiff; and that defendant Jalandoni fraudulently secured a title to lot No. 8119, by which the plaintiff was illegally deprived of possession and ownership. The defendants, for their part, sold the lot — Jalandoni conveyed it to his co-defendant Plana in 1954, and a transfer certificate of title was issued in Plana's name. The parties disputed the area: the plaintiff said 2.4807 hectares, the defendants said 4.5658 hectares.

When that first case was called for trial on November 6, 1957, the plaintiff and his counsel failed to appear, and the complaint was dismissed. The plaintiff then filed the present action on March 1, 1958.

In the second complaint the plaintiff shifted his theory. He now claimed that the disputed area was added to his land, which he now identified as lot No. 761-A of the Dueñas cadastre rather than lot No. 564, by alluvion — the gradual deposit of soil — due to the gradual change of course of the Jalaud River beginning in 1928 or 1929. He alleged that lot No. 8119 was formerly part of a bigger lot, No. 1104, belonging to Jalandoni on the opposite side of the river; that the accretion increased lot No. 761-A by no less than fifteen hectares, swallowing lot No. 8119 and a big portion of lot No. 1104; and that he had long possessed those fifteen hectares until Jalandoni divested him of them in 1954. The trial court dismissed this second complaint as barred by the prior judgment, and the plaintiff appealed.

Issues

• Whether or not there is identity of cause of action between the first case and the present case, notwithstanding the plaintiff's change of theory from a sudden change in the river course to gradual alluvion, and his change of the lot to which the accretion was said to have attached.
• Whether or not there is identity of subject matter between the two cases, such that the present complaint is barred by prior judgment in its entirety.

Applicable Provisions

The decision does not quote a statutory text; it applies the settled requisites of the plea of prior judgment, namely identity of parties, identity of cause of action, and identity of subject matter. The Court states the governing principle this way:

The parties in both cases are identical.

This identifies the first requisite as satisfied and frames the inquiry into the two remaining requisites, cause of action and subject matter, on which the appeal turns.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the trial court did not err in finding identity of cause of action. In both cases the cause of action consists of the plaintiff's alleged right of ownership and possession of land and the violation of that right by the defendants. The difference in the manner by which he says he acquired the right — a sudden change in the river course in the first case, alluvion in the second — does not make for distinct causes of action, nor does the fact that the accretion was to lot No. 564 in the first case and to lot No. 761-A in the second.

On the second issue, however, the Court held that there is no complete identity of subject matter to justify dismissal of the whole complaint. In the former action what was sought was lot No. 8119 alone, with an area of only 2.4807 hectares according to the plaintiff or 4.5658 hectares according to the defendants. In the present action, aside from lot No. 8119, the plaintiff claims an additional area described as a big portion of lot No. 1104, which he says became a permanent part of his lot No. 761-A. The total area now claimed is fifteen hectares, and the portion outside lot No. 8119 was definitely not the subject matter of the former case. Under the allegations of the first complaint the plaintiff could not have recovered that additional area, and evidence concerning it would have been ruled out as irrelevant and immaterial. The Court put the conclusion plainly:

In other words, the finding of the lower court that there is identity of subject-master, and hence bar by prior judgment, is correct with respect to lot No. 8119, but not so with respect to the rest of the property described in the complaint herein.

Accordingly, the bar of prior judgment operated only as to lot No. 8119, and not as to the additional area claimed.

Doctrine

For a plea of prior judgment to justify dismissal of a complaint, there must be identity of parties, identity of cause of action, and identity of subject matter. A change in the legal theory by which the plaintiff says he acquired the land — here, from a sudden change in the river course to gradual alluvion — does not create a new cause of action, because the cause of action is the same alleged right of ownership and possession and its violation. But where the second complaint claims land beyond what was sought in the first, there is no identity of subject matter as to that excess, and the prior judgment cannot bar the claim to it. The plea, in other words, bars only so much of the later claim as was actually the subject of the earlier one.

Disposition

The order of dismissal was set aside and the case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings, with no pronouncement as to costs.

Remember This

The one line to memorize: identity of cause of action may exist despite a change of theory, but the bar of prior judgment reaches only the subject matter actually litigated before. Examiners use this case to test whether a candidate can separate the requisites of res judicata and apply the plea partially rather than dismissing an entire complaint.