JOSE D. VILLEGAS AND RIZALINA SANTOS RIVERA, OPPOSITORS-APPELLANTS, VS. ALFREDO FERNANDO, ANGUSTIA IBAY, JUSTO IBAY AND VALENTIN BUENVIAJE, ET AL., PETITIONERS-APPELLEES.

Appeals from two orders issued by the Court of First Instance of Rizal in its capacity as a land registration court.^[1]

These twin cases arose from the following set of facts:  On 27 October 1959, the heirs of Jose Miranda
Sampedro and Leocadio
Manahan, hereinafter referred to as appellants heirs,^[2]
petitioned the Court of First Instance of Rizal to
approve their amended plan Psu – 697 – Amd. corresponding to a parcel of land situated in Macabud, Montalban, Rizal, and allegedly platted in accordance with a certain
decision rendered by the Court of Appeals on 26 November 1938, and to direct
the Land Registration Commission to issue in their name, as
successors-in-interest of the original applicants Sampedro
and Pedro Manahan,^[3] a
decree of registration for lot No. 1 of the same plan.  In the copy of the decision appended to the
petition the Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court s purported award of said
lot to the original applicants with the modification that one-sixth of the same
lot was to belong to the spouses Jose Villegas and Irene Santos^[4]
after excluding therefrom those portions of land
encompassed by the forest zone, those covered by particular titled homesteads,
and those occupied by the non-christian tribes.

Noting that there was no objection on the part of the directors
of the Bureau of Lands and the Bureau of Forestry, the original oppositors of record, the lower court issued an order on 2 December 1959 approving the plan,
together with its technical descriptions, and directing the Land Registration
Commission to issue the appropriate decree.  Accordingly, Decree No. N-75048 was issued on 22 December 1959 with the spouses
Villegas and Santos as the denoted
owners of an undivided one-sixth portion of the lot and the two groups of ap­pellants
heirs as pro-indiviso owners, in two equal
shares, of the remainder.  The decree was
transcribed two days later in the registration book of the Re­gister of Deeds
of Rizal as Original Certificate of Title No. 2180.

Within one year from the issuance of the decree, several persons,^[5]
namely, Prudencio Angeles, Macario
Bonifacio, Valentin Buenviaje, the heirs of Roberto Cruz, Severino
Cruz, Juana Estanislao, Alfredo Fernando, Justo and Angustia Ibay, Julita Ocampo,
Marcelino Ocampo, Dominador Ramos and Biviano Reynoso, Jose Salamat, Roman San
Diego and Arcadio Tolentino
filed petitions for review in the lower court. 
Claiming diverse interests prejudiced by the alleged undue inclusion of
some tracts of land in lot No. 1, petitioners for review levelled
against appellants heirs various charges commonly denominated by them as fraud
in the procurement of the aforementioned decree of registration.  They all prayed that said decree be reopened
and, together with the Original Certi­ficate of Title No. 2180, annulled; and
that the tracts of land over which they claimed interests be segregated and
decreed Instead in their favor.  The
annul­ment of the order of 2 December
1959 was, by the way, also specifically prayed for by Angeles, Buenviaje, the heirs of Roberto Cruz Fernando, Justo and Angustia Ibay, Ramos and Reynoso, and San
Diego.

Instead of filing an answer as required by the lower court,
appellants heirs moved for the dismissal of the petitions for review on the
grounds that petitioners Marcelino and Julita Ocampo’s property were not
included in the decree and that the rest of the petitioners were without
personality to question said decree, they being mere homestead or free patent
applicants whose interests were subsidiary to that of the government.

On 26 July 1961,
the lower court issued an order setting for hearing the motion to dismiss the
petitions for review of Marcelino and Julita Ocampo and denying the
motion to dismiss those of the other petitioners.  The lower court opined that homestead
applicants were included in the phrase “any person deprived of ……….
interest therein” found in section 38^[6]
of Act No. 496 and, consequently, entitled to file petitions for review thereunder.  A
subsequent motion for reconsideration filed by appellants heirs was belatedly
denied on 23 March 1963.

During one of the pre-trials in the lower court, it was
discovered that the copy of the Court of Appeals decision submitted thereto by
appellants heirs was merely a “certified copy of another copy in the office
of the Land Registration Commission which in turn was copied from a copy of the
Bureau of Lands”.  The record of the
case, including the original of the Court of Appeals decision sup­posedly
rendered therein, were allegedly lost or destroyed during the second world war.

This discovery prompted Buenviaje,
Fernando, and Justo and Angustia
Ibay to file as they did file in March, 1963,
separate petitions to set aside the order of 2 December 1959. 
In addition to their previous argument of fraud, they con­tended that
the lower court had no jurisdiction to issue said order of 2 December 1959
considering that the rendition or the very existence of the Court of Appeals
decision on which it was based was doubtful; that said decision was most
probably fictitious, or, granting that it was genuine, that it was no longer en­forceable
not only because it was barred by the statute of limitations but also because
it had not been properly reconstituted pursuant to the provisions of Act No.
3110.^[7]

In their opposition to the petition to set aside the order of 2
December 1959, appellants heirs pointed out to the lower court that said order
was already final, and was in fact already executed, and therefore, already
beyond the latter’s control; that Act No. 3110 was not applicable to a decided
case like the one under consideration; and that the record of the case,
including the Court of Appeals decision in question which was of imprescriptible nature, were, in effect, vir­tually
reconstituted upon the issuance of the aforesaid order.

On 23 August 1963,
the lower court issued another order. 
Invoking lack of authority to issue the order of 2 December 1959 in view of the non-reconstitution
of the record of the case as well as the Court of Appeals decision, it set
aside said order of 2 December 1959.

Appellants heirs moved for reconsideration of the order of 23 August 1963.  And, for the first time, Jose Villegas and
the heir of Irene Santos, Rizalina Santos Rivera,
appeared with a petition to set aside the same. 
The latter claimed that since they were not notified of the proceedings
cul­minating in the issuance of the order of 23 August 1963, the same was a nullity insofar as their
share in lot No. 1 was concerned.  Both
were denied, as per the lower court’s order of 11 April 1964.

Appellants heirs appealed directly to the Supreme Court.  Villegas and Rivera, on the other hand, went
to the Court of Appeals which, in turn, certified their case involving purely
questions of law to the Supreme Court.^[8]

Imputed to the lower court are allegedly reversible errors
consisting according to appellants heirs, (1) in holding mere homestead or free
patent applicants included in the phrase “any person deprived of . . . . .
. interest therein” appearing in section 38 of Act No. 496, and (2) in
setting aside the order of 2 December 1959 after the same became final and executory; and, according to appellants Villegas and
Rivera, in addition to appellants heirs’ second assigned error, (3) in
entertaining and granting the petitions to set aside the order of 2 December
1959 which were not only filed after more than three years from the issuance of
said order but were also based on charges not constituting the kind of fraud
contemplated by section 38 of Act No. 496; (4) in not granting their petition
to set aside the order of 23 August 1963 not­withstanding that the same was
issued without notice to them; and (5) in holding that it had no authority to
issue the order of 2 December 1959 by not dispensing with the reconstitution
despite the confirmation by the Land Registration Com­mission of the existence
of the Court of Appeals decision and the submission to the lower court of a
certified copy of an alleged original duplicate thereof kept in the Bureau of
Lands.  Appellants accordingly pray that
the two orders, res­pectively dated 23 August 1963 and 11 April 1964, be
vacated; that the order of 2 December 1959 be reinstated; and that the various
petitions for review be dismissed.

We shall consider the foregoing assigned errors in the order thus
presented

(1)  It is to be noted that the first error
assigned does not refer to the orders of 23 August 1963 and 11
April 1964, which concern the annulment of the order of 2 December 1959 (directing the
issuance of the decree) on the ground of non-reconstitution of the record of
the case and the Court of Appeals decision. 
This first assigned error (assailing the personality of the appellees to ask for a review of the decision and decree in
the registration case) is actually directed at an earlier order dated 26 April 1961 denying appellants
heirs’ motion to dismiss the petitions for review filed by the present appellees.  And
inasmuch as said order of 26 April 1961
is interlocutory,^[9]
there being as yet no trial and decision on the merits of the petitions for
review, it is premature to raise said assigned error in appellants heirs’
instant appeal.  We shall rule thereon
only when the proper time comes, i. e., after the
lower court shall have settled not only the still unresolved status and rights
of the parties, particularly those of petitioners for review, now appellees herein, almost all of whom are claiming that they
are not mere homestead or free patent applicants but patent or title holders,
but also whether the original decision should be maintained or not.  For the court below, after receiving the
evidence and hearing the parties, may still conclude in favor of appellants
herein.

(2)  Neither do we find merit in the other
assignments of error, mainly questioning the act of the court below in revoking
the previous order for the issuance of a decree of registration for the reason
that neither the records of the registration proceedings nor the decision of
the Court of Appeals in 1938 had been properly reconstituted conformably to the
law (Act 3110).

The contention of appellants on this particular issue is that the
provisions of Act 3110 (establishing the procedure to be followed in
reconstituting pending cases the records of which have been destroyed) do not
apply to Land Regis­tration Case 1117 (G. L. R. O. Record No. 48237) because
when the records were destroyed the case was no longer pending but had
been finally decided by the pre-war Court of Appeals in 1938.  This position we find to be untenable.  So long as a decree of registration has not
been issued, registration proceedings are still pending for the purposes
of the pre-Commonwealth Act 3110, and, when lost or destroyed, must be
reconstituted in conformity with said act. 
This is apparent from the provisions of section 9 thereof which reads:

“Sec. 9.  Registration
proceedings pending the issuance of decree shall be reconstituted by means of
copies furnished by the Chief of the Gen­eral Land Registration Office.  It shall be the duty of this officer,
immediately upon receipt of the notice provided for in section one of this Act,
to direct fully certified true copies of all destroyed registration proceedings
pending at the time of the destruction, and all decrees destroyed, to be sent
to the Clerk of ‘Court of First Instance concerned.”

The record on appeal, pages 11-19, makes it clear that when the
records of the case were destroyed no registration decree had as yet been
issued, because appellants precisely asked the court below to order the
issuance of a decree, annexing thereto an alleged copy of the decision.  The registration proceeding concerned was,
therefore, still a pending one under section 9 of Act 3110, and should have
been first reconstituted, as prescribed by that law.  It does not appear that the copy of the
decision in question (and upon which the revoked order was based) was a fully
certified copy issued by the chief of the General Land Registration Office.  The certification appended thereto (Record on
Appeal, page 30) is to the effect that the same is “a true copy from a photostatic copy attached to the Record on (of) Civil Case
No. 3726″, issued by a deputy clerk of the Court of First Instance of Rizal, who did not even specify what said Civil Case was
about.  Hence, said copy can not be
deemed properly attested by an officer having legal custody of the record, and
did not afford, a proper basis for the order of 2 December 1959 to issue the corresponding decree.  The court below did not, therefore, err in
revoking said order on the basis that the pre-war decision of the Court of
Appeals was not properly reconstituted, particularly in view of its undisputed
finding (in the appealed order of 23 August 1963) that the copy attached to the
petition for issuance of the decree merely “was a certified copy of
another copy in the office of the Land Registration Commission, which in turn
was copied from a copy of the Bureau of Lands” (Record on Appeal, page
268).

Appellants argue that their attaching a copy of the Court of
Appeals’ pre-­war decision was substantially a step to reconstitute the records
of the case.  This argument deserves
scant consideration, since there was no sufficient compliance with Act 3110,
particularly section 2 thereof, providing for giving of notice of the
destruction of the records to those persons who might be in­terested, such
notice to be published for four consecutive weeks “in the Of­ficial
Gazette and in one of the newspapers most widely read in the province”;
nor with Section 3 of the same Act further prescribing that upon receipt of the
application for reconstitution the Clerk of Court “shall send notice to
all parties interested, or their counsel, of the day, hour and place when the
Court may proceed to the reconstitution”.  Strict compliance of notice requirements under
statutes governing reconstitution is the rule (Manila Railroad Co. vs. Moya, L-17913, 22 June 1965).

The records before us show that notice of the petition for
approval of the amended plan and for issuance of the corresponding decree was
given only to the Director of Lands and to the Director of Forestry.  This was plainly insuf­ficient, since ‘the
law requires notice to “all other persons as might be
interested”.  There is no showing
that notice of the motion was given to the petitioners-appellees,
who are possessors of lands affected by the decree, or even to the persons
whose lots were ordered excluded by the decision of the Court of Appeals.  That petitioners-appellees
are merely applicants for homesteads or free patents, as contended by
appellants, does not excuse the lack of notice to them, considering the broad
terms of sections 2 and 3 of the Reconstitution Act (No. 3110) requiring notice
“to all persons as might be interested” through publication in
the Official Gazette and in a newspaper widely read in the province.

The jurisprudence of this Court is to the effect that upon
failure to re­constitute destroyed judicial records within the period
prescribed by law (which expired in 17 June 1963, pursuant to Republic Act No.
3081) the parties “are deemed to have waived the effects of the decision
rendered in their favor and their only alternative is to file an action anew
for the registration in their names of the lots in question”.^[10]
Appellants not having applied in due time for proper reconstitution of their
registration proceedings, the court below had no recourse but to set aside the
order for the issuance of the decree.

As a last argument, appellants vigorously contend that the court below
had jurisdiction to determine the authenticity and reliability of the copy of
the Court of Appeals decision submitted to it, and to act thereon; that having
accepted said copy as authentic in its order of 2 December 1959, the court,
could not backtrack and set aside that finding by its order of 23 August 1963,
because the preceding order by then had become final.  This plea is un­availing against herein appellees, for the latter had not been given notice of the
petition, and were not heard on its merits. 
The order of 2 December 1959
never acquired finality as to said appellees, and the
latter were free to contest the propriety and correctness thereof.  For the same reason, the court below was not
barred from reexamining its previous position and could legally reach the
conclusion that the previous order, being erroneous, should be set aside.

(3)  Appellants in Case G. R. No. L-27347, Jose
Villegas and Rizalina Santos Rivera, stress that
anyway the Office of the Land Registration Commis­sioner confirmed the
existence of the original decision of the pre-war Court of Appeals in a report
to the lower court dated 10 December
1959.  Submitted after the
issuance of the revoked order of 2
December 1959, this report can not dispense with the need of proper
reconstitution, there being no showing that notice and opportunity was given to
all the interested persons to make known their objections thereto.

(4)  Anent the claim of appellants that the fraud
averred in the petition for review is not the fraud contemplated in Section 38
of the Land Registration Act, suffice it to say that the court below
provisionally ruled otherwise when it denied the motion to dismiss the petition
for review on 26 April 1961.  Such resolution by a court having
jurisdiction is not appealable, as already observed
in our discussion of the first assignment of error; hence, any pronouncement
now on the merits of this claim of appellants would be altogether premature and
improper.  For aught we know, the court
below may find, after hearing on the merits, that the petition for review
should be denied.

Nor is there any inconsistency between the resolutions setting
aside the order of 2 December 1959,
directing the issuance of a decree of registration, and proceeding ahead with
the petition for review.  It is a
doctrine settled by previous decisions of this Supreme Court that a petition
for review under section 38 of the Land Registration Act (Act 496) may be filed
any time after the rendi­tion of the court’s decision and before the expiration
of one year from the entry of the final decree of registration (Rivera vs.
Moran, 48 Phil. 836, 839-840; Director of Lands vs. Aba,
et al., 68 Phil. 85, and cases cited therein).

WHEREFORE, finding no reversible error in the appealed
orders of 24 August 1963
and 11 April 1964, the same
are hereby affirmed.  As to the order of 26 April 1961, denying the motion to
dismiss the petition for review, the appeal therefrom
is dismissed for being premature.  Let
the records be remanded to the court of origin for further proceedings.  Costs shall be paid in solidum by appellants in both cases, G. R. Nos.
L-27347 and L-24901.

Dizon, Makalintal,
Zaldivar, Sanchez, Fernando, Teehankee,
and Barredo,
JJ., concur.

Castro, J., on leave, did not
take part.

Capistrano, J., did not take part.

Concepcion, C.J., voted in favor of this opinion before going on leave.

^[1]
Land Registration Case No. 1117, General Land Registration Office Record No.
48237.

^[2]
Appellants in G. R. No. L-24901.

^[3]
The heirs of Leocadio Manahan claimed that Pedro
Manahan transferred to them the latter’s right, participation and interest in
the lot.

^[4]
Villegas and the heir of Irene Santos, Rizalina
Santos Rivera, are present appellants in G. R. No. L-27347.

^[5] Appellees in both G. R. Nos,
L-24901 and 27347.

^[6] “Sec.
38.  If the court after hearing finds
that the applicant or adverse claimant has title as stated in his application
or adverse claim and proper for registration, a decree of confirmation and
registration shall be entered.  . . . .
Such decree shall not be opened by reason of the absence, infancy, or other disability
of any person affected thereby, nor by any proceeding in any court for
reversing judgments or decrees:  subject,
however, to the right of any person deprived of land or of any estate or
interest therein by decree of registration obtained by fraud to file in
the competent Court of First Instance a petition for review within one year
after entry of the decree provided no innocent purchaser for value has acquired
an interest.  . . . . .” (Emphasis
supplied)

^[7]
Entitled “An Act to provide an adequate procedure for reconstitution of
the records of pending judicial proceedings and books, documents, and
files of the office of the register of deeds, destroyed by fire or other public
calamities, and for other purposes” and approved on 19 March 1923.

^[8]
Court of Appeals resolution, dated 14
February 1957, in its C.A.
– G. R. No. 36160-R.

^[9]
The order of the trial court denying the motion to dismiss is merely interlocutory
which can not be the subject of appeal. 
The proper procedure in such a case is to continue with the trial on the
merits and, if the decision is adverse, to reiterate the issue on appeal.  Bautista, et al. vs. De la Cruz, et
al., G. R. No. L-21107, 24 December
1963.

^[10] Mayol vs. Piccio, 99 Phil.
404; Ambat vs. Dir. of Lands, 92 Phil. 567; Carungcong vs. Cojuangco,
88 Phil. 527.