G.R. No. L-25932. March 19, 1971
LUCILA B. VDA. DE AZARIAS, PETITIONER, VS. THE HONORABLE MANOLO L. MADDELA, IN HIS CAPACITY AS JUDGE OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE OF QUEZON AND MAMERTO AZARIAS, JR., RESPONDE…
CASTRO, J.:
Petition for certiorari to review the resolution of the
Court of Appeals of March 14, 1966 in its case
GR-37231-R.
The basic facts are undisputed.
On February 4, 1963 Mamerto Azarias, Jr. (hereinafter referred to as the private
respondent) filed a petition with the Court of First Instance of Quezon, docketed therein as special proceeding 4004 and
assigned to the branch presided by Judge Manolo L. Maddela (hereinafter referred to as the respondent Judge),
in which he prayed for appointment as administrator of the estate, and for
recognition as an acknowledged natural child, of the deceased Mamerto Azarias. Lucila B. vda. de Azarias (hereinafter
referred to as the petitioner) filed on March
25, 1963 her opposition thereto.
After due hearing, the respondent Judge, on January 22, 1965,
rendered a decision appointing the petitioner administratrix
of the intestate estate of her deceased husband, Mamerto
Azarias, and declaring the private respondent as the
natural child and an heir of the deceased and entitled to all the rights and
privileges as such. Copy of this
decision was received by the petitioner’s counsel on February 16, 1965.
On February 22, 1965
the petitioner filed a motion for reconsideration and/or correction of the
said decision, which she “respectfully submitted” for the
consideration of the respondent Judge.
She did not however include therein a notice fixing the time and place
for its hearing, although she sent copies of the motion by registered mail to
the respondent Judge and to the counsel of the private respondent on February
22, 1965, who received them on February 25 and February 23, 1965, respectively.
On April 20, 1965
the private respondent moved for execution of the decision; the petitioner
filed her opposition.
On July 28, 1965 the respondent Judge issued three orders
simultaneously, (a) denying the motion for reconsideration and/or correction on
the ground that it lacked the formalities required by the revised Rules of
Court with respect to notice; (b) granting the private respondent’s motion for
execution of the decision; and (c) denying the petitioner’s opposition to the
motion for execution.
On December 17, 1965 the petitioner filed with the respondent
Judge a cash appeal bond, a notice of appeal and a record on appeal, which were
disapproved per order of the respondent Judge dated February 14, 1966, on the
ground that the decision in the said special proceeding had become final and executory on March
18, 1965.
On March 9, 1966
the petitioner lodged with the Court of Appeals an original petition for mandamus
to compel the respondent Judge to immediately approve the petitioner’s notice
of appeal, appeal bond and record on appeal in special proceeding 4004 of the
Court of First Instance of Quezon. This petition was dismissed by the Court of
Appeals per resolution dated March 14,
1966. The petitioner’s
motion for reconsideration of the said resolution was denied by the Court of
Appeals on March 31, 1966.
Hence this appeal by way of certiorari, which poses three
assignments of error, all three reducible to one single issue: Did the lower court act legally and correctly
in dismissing the petitioner’s motion for reconsideration because it lacked a
formal notice of hearing although all parties were properly served with copies
thereof?
This issue, which is neither new nor novel, has been resolved by
this Court in cases impressive as to number and unanimity. We have
uniformly held that a motion which does not meet the requirements of sections 4 and 5 of Rule 15 of the revised Rules of
Court is a worthless piece of paper which the clerk has no right to receive and
the respondent court a quo no authority to act upon.[1]
In Manila Surety and
Fidelity Co., Inc. vs. Batu Construction and Co.,[2] this Court declared:
“The written notice referred to evidently is that prescribed
for motions in general by Rule 15, Sections 4 and 5 (formerly Rule 26), which
provide that such notice shall state
the time and place of hearing and shall be served upon all the parties concerned
at least three days in advance. And
according to Section 6 of the same Rule no motion shall be acted upon by the
court without proof of such notice.
Indeed it has been held that in such a case the motion is nothing but a
useless piece of paper (Philippine National Bank v. Donasco,
L-18638, February 28, 1963, citing Manakil v. Revilla, 42 Phil. 81; Roman Catholic Bishop of Lipa v. Municipality of Unisan,
44 Phil. 866; and Director of Lands v. Sanz, 45 Phil.
117). The reason is obvious; unless the movant sets the time and place of hearing the court would
have no way to determine whether that party agrees or objects to the motion,
and if he objects, to hear him on his objection, since the Rules themselves do
not fix any period within which he may file his reply or opposition. ” (at
pp. 437-438)
We recently reaffirmed the said doctrine in In
Re Almacen,[3]
thus:
“Recalling Atty. Almacen’s petition
for review, we found upon a thoroughgoing examination of the pleadings and
records, that the Court of Appeals had fully and correctly considered the dismissal of his appeal in the
light of the law and applicable decisions of this Court. Far from straying away from the ‘accepted and usual course of judicial
proceedings,’ it traced the procedural lines etched by this Court in a number
of decisions. There was, therefore, no
need for this Court to exercise its supervisory power.
“As
a law practitioner who was admitted to the Bar as far back as 1941,
Atty. Almacen knew – or ought to have known – that
for a motion for reconsideration to stay the running of the period of appeal,
the movant must not only serve a copy of the motion
upon the adverse party (which he did), but also notify the adverse party of the
time and place of hearing (which admittedly he did not). xxx” (at pp. 575-576)
In Bautista Angelo v. Alfaro,[4]
where the appellant filed a motion for reconsideration without serving a copy
thereof on the opposing parties and without giving a notice of hearing until
after one-and-a-half months later, this Court held that what the appellant
filed was not a motion at all but a mere scrap of paper which the Court had no
right to consider nor the clerk of Court to receive (citing Manakil v. Revilla, supra).
The petitioner, however, argues that she precisely omitted notice
of hearing in the motion for reconsideration in order not to expose the alleged
errors of the respondent Judge to the attention of the public and thus save him
from embarrassment. This reasoning
strikes us as an afterthought to conceal the forgetfulness if not the
negligence of the petitioner’s counsel; it is not a sufficient warrant to
disobey the clear and unequivocal mandate of the Rules of Court regarding the
inclusion of a notice of hearing.
The petitioner argues that a motion for reconsideration even
without a notice of hearing is valid, citing Inesin
v. Canonoy,[5]
But there were in the said case special circumstances which formed the basis of
the ruling therein, which are not present in the case at bar. The court of first instance held its sessions
in Pagadian, Zamboanga del Sur, only once a year on the dates fixed by the district
judge, pursuant to sec. 161, Rev. Adm. Code, as superseded by sec. 54 Of Rep.
Act 296. Because the sessions in Pagadian were not continuous throughout the year, and since
it was not shown that, at the time the respondent therein presented the motion
for reconsideration of the order of dismissal, the judge had already set a date
for the next term, the attorney for the movant
(respondent therein) could not set the motion for hearing, not knowing on what
date or in what month the next yearly session in Pagadian
was to be had. The omission of a notice
of hearing was therefore justified. Here
the factual situation is entirely different.
Although the petitioner alleges that the respondent Judge had a roving assignment (no doubt in an effort to
bring this case squarely within the ambit of the Inesin
ruling), holding sessions at Paler, Quezon, and at Polillo, Quezon, and in other
places of the province, there is no dispute that at the time material to this
case, the respondent court was holding sessions at Polillo,
Quezon.
Manansala v. Heras,[6]
cited by the petitioner in support of her argument that motions for
reconsideration need not actually be heard, involved pleading and practice
before the Public Service Commission, and is not therefore authority for this
case. Besides, this Court did not rule
therein that a notice of hearing may be dispensed with in a motion for
reconsideration.
The petitioner also contends that since the private respondent
was furnished a copy of the motion, there was substantial compliance with the
requirements of section 6, Rule 15 of the Rules of Court. Thus, she asserts, even if the questioned
motion for reconsideration is defective for want of a notice of hearing, that
the defect was cured because the opposing party was served with a copy thereof
and was thereby properly notified of the existence of the pleading, citing Sun Un Giok
v. Matusa.[7] This latter case is likewise not in
point. In Sun Un Giok,
there was a notice of hearing incorporated in the motion to dismiss,
which notice, although not addressed to the opposing party but to the clerk of
court, nevertheless enabled the latter to actually set the motion for hearing and notify the former
thereof. In the case at bar, there is no
notice of hearing at all in the motion for reconsideration. Parenthetically, in Almacen,
this Court did not accord any importance to the undenied
fact that a copy of the motion for reconsideration therein was furnished
the opposing party.
The assertion of the petitioner that there is no specific
provision of the Rules of Court making it a pre-requisite that motions for
reconsideration be heard or be set for hearing and the adverse party be
notified of the place, date and time for hearing, deserves scant
attention. A similar argument was
rejected by this Court in Manila
Surety, Almacen and Magno
v. Ortiz,[8] all of which involved motions for
reconsideration without notice of hearing.
Indeed, in Magno, although the
motion for reconsideration did not contain a notice of hearing, the trial court
motu proprio
set the case for hearing, but finally denied the motion for lack of the required notice of hearing. We there held that:
“As regards the notice of hearing caused to be issued by
respondent Judge, it is contended that it cured the defect of lack of
notice. Under the facts of this case,
the contention is incorrect. In the
first place, the duty to give such notice devolves upon the movant, not upon the court.
x x x Considering
that a defective motion for reconsideration does not toll the running of the
period for appeal, the decision in Civil Case No. 410 had already become final
when the notice of hearing was issued by the respondent Judge.” (at pp.
696-697)
Finally, the petitioner advances the proposition that because
the petitioner’s motion for reconsideration specified the findings in the
decision which are allegedly not in accordance with the facts and the evidence
in the case, and argued that there was incorrect application of the law to the
facts, the petition is not pro forma. Even if we were to consider the petitioner’s
pleading as a motion for new trial under Rule 37, sec. 1, paragraph (c) of the
Revised Rules of Court, because the reasons relied upon are equivalent to an
assertion that the decision is contrary to law and the evidence, the applicable
rule on the matter would be section 2, Rule 37, construed in relation to
sections 4, 5 and 6 of Rule 15. The
result is the same: a written notice of
a motion for new trial must be served by the movant
on the adverse party, stating the time and place of the hearing thereof;
without proof of service of such notice the motion can not be acted upon by the
court.[9]
ACCORDINGLY, the resolution of the Court of Appeals dated March 14, 1966 is affirmed, at
petitioner’s cost.
Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, Dizon, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Fernando, Teehankee, Barredo, Villamor, and Makasiar, JJ., concur.
[1]
PNB v. Donasco, 7 SCRA
409 (1963); Manakil v. Revile, 42 Phil. 81
(1921).
[2]
14 SCRA 435 (1965) (per Makalintal, J.).
[3]
31 SCRA 562 (1970).
[4]
95 Phil. 622 (1954)
[5]
107 Phil. 217 (1960).
[6]
103 Phil. 575 (1958).
[7]
101 Phil. 727 (1957).
[8]
26 SCRA 692 (1969).
[9]
Magno v. Ortiz, supra, citing
Manila Surety & Fidelity Co., Inc. v. Batu
Construction Co., et al., supra, and Fulton Insurance Co. v.
Manila Railroad Co., 21 SCRA 974 (1967).C