REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF, VS. SYLVIA DE KALINTAS, ET AL., CLAIMANTS. RICARDO DEQUITO, ET AL., PETITIONERS-APPELLANTS. HEIRS OF SALVADOR LOPEZ, OPPOSITORS-APPELLEES.

Appeal from a final order of the Court of First Instance of Davao dismissing a petition for review of a cadastral
decree in Cadastral Case No. N-17, LRC Cadastral Record No.
235, BL Cad. 286, Case 3 (Republic of the Philippines
vs. Sylvia de Kalintas, et al.).

The background facts gleaned from the record are the following:

On 5 December 1963, Ricardo Dequito and
33 others, residents of Pagsilaan, Limot, Municipality of Limot,
Province of Davao, filed a motion in the
above-mentioned case, seeking to set aside a decision of 28 February 1959 –

“awarding Lot No. 1285, Mati Cadastre, to the Muni­cipality of Mati,
Province of Davao, Philippines, subject to the
condition that the same be exclusively used as an agricultural school site, and
if within four years from this date of adjudication such is not the actual use
devoted to it, the same would revert to the owners, the heirs of Salvador
Lopez.”

The decision had been rendered by the then Justice of the Peace
Court of Mati, Davao,
sitting as a Cadastral Court upon assignment by the district judge, pursuant to
Section 88 of the judiciary Act, as amended by Republic Act No. 2613.  The latter act provides:

“ x x x Provided,
however, That justices of the peace may, with the approval of the
Secretary of Justice, be assigned by the respective district judge in each case
to hear and determine cadastral or land registration cases covering lots where
there is no controversy or opposition, or contested lots the value of which
does not exceed five thousand pesos,^[1]
such value to be ascertained by the affidavit of the claimant or by agreement
of the respective claimants, if there are more than one, or from the
corresponding tax declaration of real property.”

The movants claimed to be adverse possessors
under claim of title of the cadastral lot in question, since time immemorial,
who had introduced considera­ble permanent improvements in said lot, which the
Bureau of Lands intended to subdivide in their favor.  They averred that the decision of the justice
of the Peace Court was null and void for want of jurisdiction, because (a) Lot
1285 (Cad. 286) was a controverted lot, the value of
which exceeded Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00); (b) the heirs of Salvador Lopez
had not filed any answer in the Cadastral case claiming any title or interest
in said lot; (c) that the said lot, at the time the case was heard by the
Justice of the Peace of Mati, was the subject of
another land registration case, No. 273, LRC Record No. 51858, as the Land
Registration Commission had advised the Court of First Instance in September of
1963; and (d) that while on 12 October 1963 the latter court had set aside
whatever decision had been rendered in the ordinary registration case and
ordered the Land Registration Commission to proceed with the issuance of a
decree conformable to the decision of the cadastral case in favor of the heirs
of Salvador Lopez, said directive was, like the basic adjudication, also null
and void.

The motion to set aside was opposed by the Lopez heirs, and at
the hearing movants Dequito,
et al. were apprised that, as ordered, the
Registration Com­mission had already issued a decree on 14 October 1963.  In view of this dev­elopment, on 23 March
1964, they moved to be allowed to withdraw their motion to set aside and that
the present petition be amended to include an
alternative petition for review under section 38 of Act No. 496, which was
filed on the same date.

The petition for review realleged and
reproduced the jurisdictional defects pleaded in the motion to set aside the
judgment, and added that the heirs of Lopez, though they had filed no answer
nor made any claim to the lot in question, succeeded in procuring the decision
in their favor through fraud and connivance with the Justice of the Peace of Mati, Davao, by whom the lot was
adjudicated; and the property had not been transferred to an innocent purchaser
for value.  The petition for review
prayed that the decision and the decree be annulled and set aside, and that after
a new trial the controverted lot be adjudicated and
decreed in favor of the petitioners.

The motion to withdraw the original petition and to give due
course to the petition for review was objected to by the Lopez heirs. The Court
of First Instance allowed the withdrawal of this petition to annul the
judgment, but refused to give due course to the petition for review, reasoning
that as the latter constituted an amendment to the original motion, petitioners
could not be allowed to change their theory or cause of action; that the petition
for review can not be entertained in the same proceedings, because “the
original which it is intended to supplement has already been
withdrawn”.  It ruled further that
the petition had to be filed as a separate action.

Unable to have the court change its resolution, the movants, Dequito, et al.,
appealed directly to this Court.

We agree with appellants that the order under review is erroneous
and must be set aside.  In the first
place, the petition for review is not properly an amendment to the previous
motion to set aside the judgment in the cadastral case, for the objectives are
distinct.  The review is aimed at the
decree entered by the Land Registration Commission, while the motion to set
aside is against the decision of the court of first instance.  While the decree is a consequence of the
judgment, it has a virtuality all its own.  It is the basis for the issuance of the
certificate of title by the Register of Deeds, a result that the judgment can
not produce.  Hence, not being a mere
amendment, any change of theory is irrelevant.

In the second place, even if the petition for review were taken
as an amend­ment of the motion to set aside, the court a quo’s
view that it changed the cause of action or the theory of the case is not
justified.  A comparison of both
pleadings shows that the theory of the action remains unaltered, for the
petition for review restates and reproduces the grounds stated in the motion to
set aside the judgment, to wit, the lack of jurisdiction of the court that
decided the cadastral case.  While the
petition for review adds, as further ground, the fraudulent connivance between
judge and the respondents Lopez, to the prejudice of appellants, such
allegations are not incompatible with the preceding ones,^[2]
and the aim pursued is still the nullification of the cadastral proceedings and
award. Considering further that neither the motion to set aside nor the
petition for review have been as yet heard or decided on the merits, the action
taken by the court below is certainly un­warranted.

Nor is the ruling that the petition for review can not be filed
in the same proceeding before the court any more tenable.  Section 112 of the Land Registration Act
(made applicable to Cadastral proceedings by section 11 of Act 2259) requires
that all petitions and motions after original registration “shall be filed
and entitled in the original case in which the decree of registration was
entered”, the purpose being to avoid confusion and difficulty in tracing
the origin of the entries in the registry (Cavan vs. Wislizenus, 48 Phil. 636).

Appellees contend that the lot at issue
was really uncontested and that the petition for review is belated.  These matters were not passed upon by the
court below, and we feel that the same should be threshed out there, since a
correct determination of the same can only be made by referring to and
scrutinizing the record of the cadastral case, and
that record is not before this Court.

WHEREFORE, the appealed order of the Court of First
Instance of Davao dismissing appellants’ petition for
review is hereby set aside, and the records are ordered remanded to the said
court for further proceedings conformable to this opinion.  Costs against appellees, heirs of Salvador Lopez.

Concepcion, C.J., Dizon,
Makalintal, Zaldivar,
Sanchez, Castro, Fernando, Capistrano, Teehankee, and Barredo, JJ., concur. 

^[1]
Subsequently increased to P10,000.00 by Republic Act
No. 3828, approved 22 June 1963.

^[2] In Vda. de Cuaycong
vs. Senbengco, L-11837, November 29, 1960,
this Court ruled that a decree of registration may be reviewed not only by
reason of fraud but also for a fatal infirmity of the decision upon which the
decree is based, provided no innocent purchaser for value will be prejudiced.