ERNESTO CASTAÑEDA, PETITIONER, VS. HEIRS OF PASTORA MARAMBA & HON. COURT OF APPEALS, SIXTH DIVISION, RESPONDENTS.

Appeal, by petition for review, from the
decision of the Court of Appeals (Sixth Division), in its Case CA-G. R. No. 32140-R, reversing the Judgment of the Court of First
Instance of Pangasinan.

The background of the case can be gleaned from the following
findings in the appealed decision (Petition, Annex “A”):

“After going over the records of Civil Case
No. D-287, the following facts come to light:

1.  That Civil Case No. D-287 was insti­tuted by Pastora Maramba against Romulo, Mamer­to, Juanita, Baltazar and Gaudencia, all
surnamed Maramba, praying that she be declared the
sole heir of the deceased Nicolas Maramba and Cipriano Maramba, and in the
alternative, should defendants’ rights prevail over the plaintiff’s in the
succession to the estate of the aforementioned decedents, that said defendants
be ordered to execute a deed of reconveyance in favor
of plaintiff with respect to an undivided 1/3 portion of the properties enu­merated
in the complaint;

2.  Defendants Romulo, Mamerto and Juanita, all surnamed Maramba
are the children of Nicolas Maramba, while defendants
Baltazar Maramba and Gaudencia Maramba are the
children of Cipriano Maramba;

3.  On September
21, 1956, plaintiff Pastora Maramba and defendants Baltazar
and Gaudencia Maramba
entered into an amicable settlement in Civil Case No. D-287, embodied in a
partial deci­sion of the same date, wherein plaintiff Pastora
Maramba was given the one-fourth (1/4) share of lot
117, corresponding to and registered in the name of Cipriano
Maramba;

4.  On September
4, 1957, plaintiff amended her complaint in Civil Case No. D-287,
wherein among other things she (a) included Natalia Arabe as one of the defendants and alleged heirs of Ni­colas
Maramba; and (b) in her “Common to both Causes
of Action” she stated:

That the plaintiff and the defendants, Baltazar
Maramba and Gaudencia
Maramba, had already submitted an amicable settle­ment,
regarding their respective claims and/or defenses, as recited in this com­plaint,
and which was copied in the original complaint, for which this Court, as shown
in the records, had already rendered a partial judgment; that, consequently,
therefore, all that remains to be decided in the foregoing complaint relates to
the plaintiff’s action solely against the defen­dants except  the above-named Baltazar
Maramba and Gaudencia Maramba. 
(Underscoring supplied)

5.  On 5 July 1960, plaintiff Pastora
Maramba and defendants Natalia
Arabe, Maramba, Mamerto Maramba and Juanita Maramba, entered into an agreement which was approved and
embodied in a deci­sion dated August 23, 1960, wherein Pastora
Maramba waived and quitclaimed all her claims to the
parcels of land subject of the litigation, among which is the one-fourth (1/4)
portion of Lot 117, in favor of the aforecited
defendants;

6.  On January
9, 1962, defendants filed an urgent petition dated December 16, 1961, praying that a
supplemental order be issued holding that all plaintiff’s claim in the seven
parcels of land described in said Civil Case D-287 have been completely waived
and quit­claimed in favor of defendants assignee,
Atty. Ernesto Castañeda.  To this petition plaintiff filed an
opposition based principally on the grounds (a) that there is no necessity for
plaintiff to again execute another deed for the purpose of renouncing her
rights to the proper­ties thereto described; and (b) that it will modify the
judgment of August 23, 1960, in the sense that what is prayed for by defendants
in their petition will in fact operate to make plaintiff renounce not only the
1/4 portion litigated between them, but the other 1/4 portion liti­gated
between plaintiff and defendants Baltazar and Gaudencia Maramba, which has
already been the subject of a partial decision.

7.  On March 19, 1962, the trial court issued an
order denying defendants’ aforementioned petition of December 16, 1961, on the
ground that defendants seek a relief ‘which will have the effect of running
counter to, or modifying, the decision dated August 23, 1960, which has already
become final and executory.’”

However, upon urgent petition of appellant Castañeda,
dated 21 May 1962, pointing out that in the compromise agreement of 23 August
1960 Pastora Maramba not
only expressly included in her quitclaim a 1/4 undivided portion of Lot 117
(later Lot 117-C) of the Dagupan Cadastre (inter alia) but she had in addition expressly authorized Natalia Jarabe, widow of Nicolas Maramba, “to sell any or all of the properties”
covered by the agreement conditioned upon payment to the quitclaimer
Pastora of the sum of P3,000, which her son had later
received in her behalf, the Court of First Instance reversed its previous position,
and by order of 20 July 1962 declared petitioner Castañeda,
vendee of Natalia Jarabe
for and in behalf of herself and her children, Romulo,
Mamerto and Juanita Maramba,
entitled to the ownership of the entire Lot 117-C.  The court further ordered the Register of
Deeds of Pangasinan to issue the corresponding
certificate of title to Castaneda (Record on Appeal, pages 1 and 45, et
seq.).  Unable to secure recon­sideration,
the children and heirs of Pastora Maramba
resorted to the Court of Appeals, which (as already noted at the start of this
opinion) reversed the Court of First Instance, holding that the quitclaim and
authority to sell executed by Pastora in 1960 could
not refer to the 1/4 portion of Lot 117 decreed in her favor by the partial de­cision
of 1960, since the latter had become final. 
Hence, Castañeda in turn came to this Court.

In assessing the correctness of the decision of the Court of
Appeals, now under review, it is indispensable to bear in mind that there had
been two (2) distinct compromises in this case while it was in the Court of
First Instance.  There was first the 20 September 1956 amicable settlement
between Pastora Maramba
(predecessor of herein private respondents) on the one hand and on the other
the children of her brother Cipriano Maramba (Baltazar and Gaudencia).  By this
first compromise, Pastora was adjudicated an
undivided 1/4 portion of Lot 117 of the Dagupan Cadastre, while the heirs of Cipriano
were allotted an undivided 1/2 of the Lot 2984 of the
same survey.  This settlement was
approved by the partial decision of 21
September 1956 (Record on Appeal, page 46; Order of 20 July
1962).  Note that in this settlement the
heirs of Pastora’s other brother, Nicolas Maramba, did not intervene; they were not parties thereto,
and it did not affect them.

Why was Pastora allocated only 1/4 of Lot
117?  The court order of 20 July 1962 explains it (Record on
Appeal, pages 48-49).  Lot 117 had been
split into lots 117-A (which was a road), 117-B corresponding to Felipe F.
Fernandez (not a party to the case), and Lot 117-C corresponding to Cipriano and Nicolas Maramba,
who, therefore, held 1/2 each of Lot 117-C, i.e., 1/4 each of the old Lot 117,
since half of the old Lot 117 (now Lot 117-B) already was owned by
Fernandez.  The 1/4 al­located to Pastora was thus the share of Cipriano
in Lot 117-C; the other 1/4 was the share of Nicolas Maramba.  Both
fractions (constituting the whole of Lot 117-C) made up
1/2 of the old Lot 117 (excluding the road, Lot
117-A).  By accepting this 1/4 portion
from the heirs of Cipriano, Pastora
virtually recognized that the other 1/4 corresponded to the heirs of Nicolas Maramba.  And just as
the heirs of Cipriano transferred all their interest
(1/4) in Lot 117 to Pastora,
she in turn agreed that Cipriano’s children should
have 1/2 of Lot 2984. 
Again, the implication is that the other half of this lot belonged to
the heirs of Nicolas, petitioner’s pre­decessors in interest.

Then came the second compromise dated 5 July 1960, embodied in and approved by the trial
court’s decision of 23 August 1960
(Record on Appeal, pages 6-12).  By this
settlement between Pastora and the heirs of her
brother Nicolas Maramba, Pastora
quitclaimed and waived “now and forever”, in favor of the heirs of
Nicolas, all her claims to the following parcels of land:

(1)  1/3 of lot 833 of the Cadastral Survey of Dagupan;

(2)  1/2 of Lot 2984, do.

(3)  1/3 of Lot 950, do.

(4)  1/3 of Lot 971;

(5)  1/4 of Lot 117
“under original transfer (sic) certificate of title No. 4643,
……. (T.C.T. No. 3962)” (Record on Appeal, page 10).

(6)  1/3 of Lot 1267;

(7)  All of Lot 1046.

Pastora not only renounced all her
claims to these lots; she went further, and stipulated that –

“the widow of Nicolas, Natalia Jarabi (sic) is
authorized to sell any or all the properties above described in this agreement
………. for the amount she may be able to sell them, provided that out of
the proceeds of the sale, after paying the real estate taxes and inheritance
taxes, to pay THREE THOUSAND (P3,000.00) PESOS to the
plaintiff, Pastora Maramba,
by way of consideration to the quitclaims above mentioned ……………..” (Record on Appeal, page 11).

In short, the compromise of 1960 involved not only a waiver of Pastora’s claims over the lots, but an actual conveyance of
the properties enumerated to the heirs of Nicolas, represented by his widow,
since they were empowered to sell the quitclaimed portions of the lots.  And they were in fact sold to petitioner
herein, Ernesto Castañeda, by a deed of sale dated 5
April 1962 (Record on Appeal, pages 12-15), which purported to –

“sell,  transfer and convey all their rights,
interests, participation and shares and title as well as those pro­perties
quitclaimed in their favor by Pastora Maramba“.

the vendee
undertaking to pay the latter P3,000.00 as agreed in the compromise of
1960.  That this amount was actually paid
is not disputed.

The question before Us now is which 1/4
of Lot 117 was included in Pastora’s
1960 quitclaim deed in favor of the heirs of her brother Nicolas Maramba.  The latter
(and their vendee, petitioner Castañeda) urge that
the 1/4 quitclaimed by Pastora is precisely the 1/4
she obtained from the successors of Cipriano Maramba.  Pastora’s heirs (respondents in this Court) contend that it
was the other 1/4 of Lot 117 unaffected or not included
in her 1956 settlement with the heirs of Cipriano.  And this last contention the Court of Appeals
sustained, arguing that Pastora did not intend to
quitclaim and abandon the 1/4 allotted to her in the settlement and decision of
21 September 1956 because the decision of 23 August 1960 (approving the
quitclaim in favor of the heirs of Nicolas Maramba)
“mentions only one fourth (1/4) and not one half (1/2) of Lot 117.  If the intention of Pastora
Maramba was to include the share of Cipriano Maramba, then they would
have so stated in their agreement for judgment”.

We fail to see the
logic of this conclusion.  In her
complaint Pastora Maramba
only claimed reconveyance of an undivided one-third
(1/3) of the properties held by her deceased brothers Cipriano
and Nicolas, thus impliedly recognizing that her two brothers aforesaid owned
the other two-thirds (2/3).  It is dif­ficult
to understand how she could be expected to quitclaim one-half of Lot
of 117 in favor of the heirs of Nicolas, when that would be more than what in
her complaint she asserted to be her share (1/3).  The only share she could waive was precisely
the one-fourth (1/4) of original Lot 117 (which is 1/2
of Lot 117-C) that she obtained by the 1956 settle­ment
with the heirs of Cipriano Maramba,
as confirmed by the partial decision of 21
September 1956.  Plainly, the
Court of Appeals allowed itself to be unduly impressed by the alleged finality
of the partial de­cision aforementioned, entirely oblivious of the fact that
this decision never became final as to Nicolas Maramba,
or the heirs of the latter, who did not participate in the settlement confirmed
by the partial de­cision aforesaid.

An examination of the agreement between Pastora
and the heirs of Nicolas Maramba, quoted in the
decision of 23 August 1960, will show that Pastora
therein waived her claims to one-third (1/3) of the lots therein enumerated,
which is precisely the share she demanded in her initial complaint against her
brothers.  The only exceptions are Lot
117 of the Dagupan Cadastre of which she renounced
1/4 and Lot 2984 of which she waived one-half
(1/2).  Why this variation?  Obviously it was due to the fact that by the
previous separate agreement with the heirs of Cipriano
Maramba, Pastora had
already accepted 1/4 (not 1/3) of Lot 117 in exchange for 1/2 of Lot 2984
allocated to Cipriano’s children.  Hence, in her agreement with the heirs of
Nicolas, she could only waive the fourth (1/4) of lot 117 that she obtained,
and the one-half of Lot 1984 that was not allocated to
the heirs of Cipriano.  But the plain import of the agreement was
that Pastora Maramba was
renouncing all her original claims to the properties held by her brothers, in
exchange of the P3,000.00 stipulated, and which the heirs of Nicolas caused to
be paid to her through appellant Castañeda, to whom
the former sold their respective rights.

We conclude that Pastora Maramba had by the compromise with the heirs of Nicolas Maramba divested herself in their favor of any claim to Lot
117.  And since the heirs of Nicolas
subsequently conveyed to petitioner Castañeda their
original interest amounting to 1/4 of Lot 117 plus the 1/4 quitclaimed in their
favor by Pastora Maramba,
Ernesto Castañeda became the owner of 1/2 of the
original Lot 117 of the Dagupan Cadastre (that is now
Lot 117-C thereof), as correctly held by the court of origin.

ACCORDINGLY, the appealed decision of the Court of Appeals
is reversed and set aside, and that of the Court of First Instance of Pangasinan is reinstated. 
Costs against respondent heirs of Pastora
Maramba.

Concepcion, C.J., Makalintal,
Zaldivar, Ruiz Castro, Fernando, Teehankee, Barredo,
Villamor, and Makasiar,
JJ., concur.