VICTORIO DAISUG, PETITIONER, VS. HON. COURT OF APPEALS, AND FLORO SACAY, VICTORIA DUCA­LANG AND FRUC­TOSO DUCALANG, RESPONDENTS.

Appeal via certiorari from the resolution of the Court of Appeals
in its CA-G. R. No. 37318-R, dated September 16, 1969, reading as follows:

“The Rollo of this case reveals that on July 12, 1969 we
granted defendant-appellant a period of thirty (30) days (in­stead of the forty
(40) days prayed for by appellant in his motion for first extension dated June
28, 1969) from July 2, 1969 to file appellant’s brief or until August 1,
1969. On August 5, 1969, or four (4)
days after the period autho­rized by this Court to appel­lant to file his brief
has ex­pired, defendant-appellant, through counsel, registry mailed a motion
praying for a second extension of 30 days from August 11, 1969.

“WHEREFORE, the motion of defendant-appellant dated Aug. 5,
1969 praying for a second extension of 30 days, having been filed four (4) days
after the period sought to be extended has expired, is hereby denied and the
present appeal of defendant-appellant is ordered dismissed.

“SO ORDERED.

JOSE S. RODRIGUEZ

“WE CONCUR:

NICASIO A. YATCO JOSE N. MENDOZA”

It appears that in Civil Case No. 646-0 of the Court of First
Instance of Leyte, which is for the recovery of possession and partition of
several par­cels of land plus damages, judgment was rendered in favor of
therein plaintiffs, now private respondents, and against the defendant, herein
petitioner, on November 18, 1965. On
December 20, 1965, petitioner filed a “Motion to Set Aside the Judgment
and To Grant Defendant a New Trial” which the court a quo
denied in its order of December 28, 1965. From that order, petitioner appealed to the Court of Appeals where said
appeal was docketed as CA-G.R. No. 37318?R.

When the case was already in the appellate court and after the
period for filing appellant’s brief had started, the then counsel for
petitioner was appointed Judge of the Court of First Instance of Bohol, for
which reason he formally withdrew his appearance as such counsel and asked for
time, 45 days from notice of the court’s resolution, for petitioner to look for
new counsel and to file the brief because he anticipated that the new counsel
would need an ad­ditional period to file the same. In a resolution dated April 21, 1969, the Court of Appeals
granted withdrawing counsel’s motion and gave petitioner the period of 45 days
prayed for. Copy of said resolution was
received by petitioner on May 19, 1969. On June 10, 1969, or twenty-two (22) days after receipt of the said
resolution by petitioner’s withdrawing counsel, a new lawyer formally entered
his appearance as counsel for petitioner in the case. Nineteen days thereafter or on June 29, 1969, said new counsel
filed his own motion for extension of time to file petitioner’s brief,
specifying that the extension period be of FORTY (40) DAYS to start from July
2, 1969. Acting on this motion, on July
12, 1969, the Court of Appeals re­solved as follows:

“Upon motion by defendant-appellant, the Court RESOLVED TO
GRANT a first extension of 30 days from July 2, 1969 within which to file
appellant’s brief.”

Four (4) days after the expiration of the ex­tended period
granted in the above-quoted resolution, but before said new counsel could
receive copy there­of and know therefrom that he had been granted only thirty
days, the same counsel filed another motion for extension of time within which
to file his brief; and, allegedly, it was only in the latter part of that day
(11:00 a.m.) that he received copy of the above resolution, hence his
“Manifestation” of even date asking the court that the additional
30-day pe­riod requested in his later motion for extension be made to start
from August 1, 1969 and not from Aug­ust 11, 1969 as stated therein. Subsequently, and without even inquiring
about the fate of these mo­tions, counsel filed on August 20 and September 8,
respectively, two other motions for extension, the former for 20 days from
August 29 and the latter for 10 days from the expiration of the last
extension. In the meanwhile, on
September 8, 1969, the same date he filed his last motion, the Vera Printing
Press actually filed printed copies of the brief with the appellate court. Evidently, counsel did not hear from the
court until October 1, 1969, when he received a copy of the appealed resolution
aforequoted. He moved for
reconsideration, but the same was denied; hence the present petition wherein it
is claimed that:

“I.   THE HONORABLE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN
ORDERING THE DISMISSAL OF PETITIONER’S APPEAL IN CA-G. R. No. 37318-R,
CONSIDERING THAT BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF PETITIONER OF THE RE­SOLUTION OF HIS
FIRST MOTION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO FILE APPELLANT’S BRIEF GRANTING HIM
THIRTY (30) DAYS INSTEAD OF FORTY DAYS AS PRAYED FOR IN THE MOTION, PETITIONER
HAD AL­READY MAILED HIS SECOND MOTION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO FILE SAID
APPELLANT’S BRIEF;

“II.  THAT THE HONORABLE COURT OF APPEALS ERRED IN
NOT GIVING DUE COURSE OF THE APPEAL CONSIDERING THAT ON SEP­TEMBER 8, 1969,
PETITIONER HAD FILED HIS BRIEF WITH THE SAID COURT AND THE ORDER OF DISMIS­SAL
WAS ONLY MADE MORE THAN A WEEK AFTER, OR ON SEPTEMBER 16, 1969; and

“III. THAT PETITIONER’S EVI­DENCES ARE STRONG, AND IF
HIS APPEAL WILL BE GIVEN DUE COURSE, THE DECISION OF THE TRIAL COURT WOULD MOST
PROBABLY BE REVERSED, OR SET ASIDE, AND THE CASE BE REMANDED TO THE TRIAL COURT
FOR THE FURTHER RECEPTION OF EVIDENCE OF THE PETITIONER.”

We find no merit in the petition. The situation here presented closely resembles the following
factual setting found by this Court in Razalan vs. Concep­cion:^[1]

“On February 4, 1968, petition­ers filed a motion for
extension of 30 days to file said brief. In a resolution, dated February 10, 1968, petitioners were granted said
extension, beginning ‘from February 23, 1968.’ On March 21, 1968, petitioners
moved for a se­cond extension of 30 days from March 23, 1968, to file said
brief, but the Court of Appeals granted merely an extension of 20 days
beginning from March 24, 1968 – and, accordingly, ending on April 13,
1968. Notice of the resolution to this
effect was is­sued by the Court of Appeals on April 4, 1968, but it was not
mailed until April 17, 1968. Pe­titioners
claim to have received this notice on April 23, 1968. Three (3) days prior thereto, or on April 20, 1968, they moved
for a third extension of 30 days from April 22, 1968, to file their brief. This motion was received by the Court of
Appeals on April 27, 1968. It having
been, in legal contemplation, filed on April 20, 1968, or seven (7) days after
the expiration of the second ex­tension of 20 days granted by the Court of
Appeals, the same dismis­sed the appeal taken by petition­ers herein.

“A reconsideration of the reso­lution of dismissal having been
denied, petitioners commenced the present action against the Concep­cions and
the Court of Appeals, upon the ground that the latter had acted with grave
abuse of dis­cretion in dismissing their (peti­tioners’) aforementioned
appeal. This contention is predicated
upon the fact that notice of the resolu­tion of the Court of Appeals, dated
April 4, 1968, granting them a se­cond extension of 20 days from March 24,
1968, had not been mailed until April 17, 1968, or four (4) days after the
expiration of said ex­tension on April 13, 1968, and was not received by them
until April 23, 1968, or 10 days after the expiration of said period.”

Upon these facts, We then ruled that:

“Pursuant to Section 15 of Rule 46 of the Rules of Court,
‘(e)xtension of time for the filing of briefs will not be al­lowed,
except for good and suf­ficient cause, and only if the motion for extension is
filed before the expiration of the time sought to be extended.’ Petitioners’
motion for a second extension states that their brief ‘has already been
finally drafted, the same is now with a printing press for printing.’
The brief filed by petitioners on May 9, 1968, consisted of 39 pages only,
including its table of contents. Any
practising lawyer knows that twenty (20) days are more than sufficient to
complete the printing of a brief of such length, including its
proofreading. Still, petitioners filed
it, neither within said pe­riod of 20 days nor within the 30 days requested
by them.

“Besides, in Yabut vs. Ventura (77 Phil. 493, 495. Italics ours.), this Court held:

‘There was no justifica­tion for defendants-appel­lants’ attorney
to take for granted that he would be given, or had been given, the entire
period of exten­sion he had asked for. Neither the pertinent pro­vision of the Rules of Court nor the practice
of this court could have in­spired reassurance of a favorable action on his
motion to its full extent. Far from
favoring automa­tic or indiscriminate granting of extensions of time to file
brief, the rule and the policy of this Court on the matter bear a marked
tendency to make such concessions sparingly. Section 16 of Rule 48 of the Rules of Court provides that “ex­tension
of time for the filing of brief will not be allowed, except for good
and sufficient cause.” And the policy of many years’ standing of this
court is to grant no more than 15 days for first extension and 10 days for
second extension.’

“This view has been reiterated in a number of subsequent
cases, some of which are cited on the margin (Re­public vs. People’s Surety and
Insur­ance Company, L-16780, May 31, 1961; National Lumber & Hardware Co.
v. Velasco, 106 Phil. 1098; Wack Wack Golf & Country Club v. Court of Ap­peals,
106 Phil. 501; Benares Montelibano vs. Benares, 103 Phil. 106; Parina v.
Cobangbang, L-8398, March 21, 1956).”

In the case at bar, petitioner’s original period to file his
brief started before his original counsel asked for permission to withdraw, and
upon the request of said counsel, petitioner was given an additional period of
forty-five (45) days from notice within which to look for new counsel and file
his brief. After twenty-two (22) days
of this period had elapsed, a new counsel entered his appearance, only to file
nineteen days thereafter, what was virtually already a second motion for
extension of the period to file petitioner’s brief. He asked for forty (40) days from July 2, 1969, or, in effect, a
total period of sixty-three (63) days from the date of his first appearance.

Under these circumstances, We cannot say that the Court of Appeals
acted so improperly or has so far de­parted from the accepted and ordinary
course of judicial proceedings as to call for the exercise of the power of
supervision of this Court. On the
contrary, the appel­late court merely acted pursuant to the afore-quoted
doctrine in Razalan. Besides, in
issuing the questioned resolutions, the appellate court merely adhered, even in
a manner more liberally in favor of petitioner, to said court’s general en
banc Resolution No. 8 of January 3, 1963, quoted in respondent’s brief,
(pp. 4-5) prescrib­ing uniform rules for the extension of the time for fil­ing
of briefs as follows:

“A first extension of thirty (30) days;

“A second extension of twenty (20) days;

“A third extension of ten (10) days;

“A fourth extension of five (5) days; etc.”

As already pointed out above,
petitioner’s motion of June 29, 1969, was virtually for a second extension on
his behalf, hence, counsel ought to have known that un­der Resolution No. 8
just quoted, he could not expect the Court to give him an extension of more
than twenty (20) days. And even if it
may be argued that it was the first extension the new counsel was asking for,
still his maximum would have been only thirty (30) days instead of the forty
(40) days he had asked. Aside from the
fact that, as just explained, counsel not only did not have any basis for
expecting that the Court would grant his motion for 40 days, rather, he ought
to have known the terms of above Resolution No. 8, under which the maximum he
could be given is 30 days, We want to reiterate and emphasize Our ruling
expressed in the cases cited in Rasalan, aforequoted, that no party should
assume that his motion for extension will be granted, for, to start with,
notwithstanding the rules of convenience such as above-mentioned Resolution No.
8 of the Court of Appeals, the granting of any exten­sion of time to parties
for compliance with any rule or order is not a matter of right but of sound
judicial discretion. The Court notes
that inspite of its above?cited repeated pronouncements, there are still
parties who would regard them lightly. Naturally, such atti­tude can only be condemned and such parties must
suf­fer the consequences of their indifference.

We have gone over the record on appeal and even the briefs of the
parties in the Court of Appeals, and We do not find therein any circumstance
which could warrant some measure of liberality or leniency to peti­tioner. Quite the other way, the decision of the
trial judge decried the fact that not only had petitioner failed to comply with
orders of the Court intended to accelerate proceedings but had also succeeded
in post­poning the hearings for at least fifteen times on more or less trivial
grounds. Nor is there any clear show­ing
here by petitioner of any substantial error commit­ted by the trial judge in
his judgment.

IN VIEW OF ALL THE FOREGOING, the resolution of the Court
of Appeals appealed from is affirmed, with costs against petitioner.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Makalintal, Zaldivar, Castro,
Fernando, Teehankee, Villamor, and Makasiar,
JJ., concur.

Dizon, J., did not take part.

^[1]
L-29374, February 18, 1970, 31 SCRA 611, 612-613.