BASILIA COLOMA VDA. DE VALDEZ, PETITIONER, VS. CONSTANTS L. FARIÑAS, ET AL., ETC., RESPONDENTS.

This is a petition for certiorari to annul an order of the Court of
First Instance of Ilocos Sur remanding Civil Case No. 19 of the justice
of the peace court of Candon, Ilocos Sur, to said justice of the peace
court for trial and further proceedings.

It appears that on February 20, 1952, petitioner herein Basilia
Coloma Vda. de Valdez filed an action against respondent Constante L.
Farinas to recover from him the sum of P2,000, the value of a
promissory note attached to the complaint as Annex A. The case was set
for, hearing on March 10, 1952, and as on that date the defendant
Farinas did not appear, the justice of the peace court declared him in
default and rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff for the sum of
Pl,900 and for P100 as attorney’s fees. On March 11, 1952, the court
received two motions of defendant, one for postponement and another for
dismissal. These motions were dated March 6, 1952, but evidently they
failed to reach the court on or before the date set for the trial. The
defendant received copy of the judgment against him on March 14, 1952,
and ten days thereafter, on March 24, 1952, he filed an undated motion
to lift the order of default and set aside the judgment. This motion
(to set aside the order of default and judgment), as well as the
motions for postponement and dismissal, was denied by the justice of
the peace. On April 17, 1952, defendant appealed from the judgment of
the justice of the peace court to the Court of First Instance, and on
April 21, 1952, the case was transmitted to the latter court. On June
5, defendant presented a motion in the Court of First Instance, praying
that the ruling of the justice of the peace court on the three motions
he had presented be reviewed, and that if the said ruling be reversed,
the case be remanded to the court of origin. On October 21,1952,
plaintiff also filed a motion to dismiss the appeal. After hearing this
motion, the respondent judge denied it, but reversed the judgment by
default rendered by the justice of the peace court and remanded the
case to the latter court for further proceedings. It is against this
order that this petition has been filed.

The Court of First Instance held that it was error for the justice
of the peace court to have rendered a judgment by default in view of
the fact that the defendant had presented a motion for postponement of
the trial, because the lawyer had to attend to a case in which the life
of an individual might have been at stake. It further held that the
judgment by default is not a judgment upon the merits of the
controversy. In consequence, it reversed the judgment by default and
ordered the case remanded to the justice of the peace court for further
proceedings.

There seems to be some confusion as to the date when the motion for
postponement was considered as filed in the justice of the peace,
court. The judge of the Court of First Instance states that it was
already in the court at the time of the trial; but the petitioner
alleges in his complaint that it was received by the justice of the
peace court only on March 11, 1952. This does not affect the result of
this case, however.

A study of the record shows that the order of the Court of First Instance complained of was issued upon an ex parte
motion presented by the defendant entitled, “Motion Ex Parte for a
Ruling on the Decision Appealed From,” wherein it is alleged that the
appeal involves only a question of law, because the question raised is
whether or not the inferior court erred in denying the motion for
postponement, the motion for dismissal, and the motion to set aside the
order of default and the judgment. The said motion, therefore, seeks to
review the order of the justice of the peace court merely. The Court of
First Instance evidently agreed with the movant, and pursuant to the
movant’s request it remanded the case to the court of origin for trial
and for further proceedings.

It is evident that the procedure adopted by the Court of First
Instance is not permitted or sanctioned by the rules. An appeal from
the justice of peace court to the Court of First Instance, once
perfected, operates to vest in the Court of First Instance the jurisdiction to try the case “de novo
upon its merits in accordance with the regular procedure in that court,
as though the same had never been tried before and had been originally
there commenced.” (Section 9, Rule 40, Rules of Court.) The
jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance on the appeal may not be
limited only to a consideration of the errors of law committed by the
inferior court. The only instance in which such a review may be allowed
is when the conditions specified in section 10 of the same rule are
present i.e., “where the action has been disposed of by an inferior
court upon a question of law and not after a valid trial upon the
merits,” the instances of which are those where the court dismisses a
case without trial for improper venue, or for lack of jurisdiction, or
for insufficiency of the complaint, in all of which there would be no
trial upon the merits.

When a judgment by default is rendered by a justice of the peace
court, and thereafter, pursuant to the rules, plaintiff adduces his
evidence in support of the allegations of the complaint, it can not be
said that there is no trial upon the merits, and neither can it be said
that the case is disposed of on a question of law. In such a case, the
court investigates the allegations of the complaint, and renders a
judgment on the merits of the case. Section 10 of Rule 40 is,
therefore, not applicable.

In the case at bar, it seems that the judge a quo was of
the opinion that in a case pending in the Court of First Instance on
appeal any party may ask for a review of any order of the court a quo on a question of law. It was evidently under this belief that the motion ex parte
to review the three orders of the justice of the peace court was
granted. This procedure is applicable to appeals in the Supreme Court
from a Court of First Instance, but it is never applicable to an appeal
from the justice of the peace court to the Court of First Instance. In
this latter appeal, the rule applicable is section 9 of Rule 40, as
already explained above. If, as section 9 of Rule 40 provides, the case
stands in the Court of First Instance for a trial de novo, as
if there it had been originally commenced, it follows that no order of
the justice of the peace court may be brought to the consideration of
said Court of First Instance for review, and the latter, if it decides
any of the said questions, would be acting in violation of section 9 of
Rule 40.

A reading of sections 10 and 11 of Rule 40 readily confirms the
application of the rule as above set forth. Under section 9, once the
appeal has been perfected, it stands for trial de novo,
unless in accordance with section 10 the case is disposed of on a
question of law and without a valid trial on the merits. (Algarin et
al. vs. Navarro,^[*] G. R. No. L-5257, April
14, 1954.) The intention of the rule is to allow the remand of a case
appealed to the justice of the peace court only when there has been no valid trial thereon in that court. These circumstances do not exist in the case at bar.

Only one minor point needs be considered, although the same has not
been put in issue or raised, because it is essential to the
determination of the question of whether or not the case was properly
brought in the Court of First Instance on appeal, as required by
section 9 of Rule 40, for the Court of First Instance acquires
jurisdiction to try the case on the merits only if the appeal has been
legally perfected. The record discloses that the defendant had
presented in the justice of the peace court a motion to set aside the
judgment by default, and that he appealed only after the said motion
had been denied. This is the correct procedure as held in Sitchon, et
al. vs. The Provincial Sheriff of Occidental Negros and Luzon Surety
Co., Inc., 45 Off. Gaz. (Supp. No. 9) 25, 80 Phil., 397. (I Moran, 896,
1952 Rev. ed.)

For the foregoing consideration, we declare that as the appeal to
the Court of First Instance has been duly perfected, the case stands in
that court for trial de novo upon its merits. The order appealed from
is hereby reversed, and the case returned to the Court of First
Instance for further proceedings, with costs against the respondent
Constante L. Fariñas.

Paras, C, J., Pablo, Bengzon, Montemayor, Reyes, Jugo, Bautista Angelo, and Concepcion, JJ., concur.

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^[*] Supra, p. 764