G.R. No. L-33213. June 29, 1979
ARTEMIO C. REYES AND HILARION C. REYES, PETITIONERS, VS. HON. ANDRES STA. MARIA, PRESIDING JUDGE, COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE OF BULACAN, BRANCH II, HILARIA SANTOS VDA. DE LOPEZ AND…
TEEHANKEE, J.:
The Court sets aside the lower court’s Order which dismissed
petitioners-plaintiffs’ complaint filed before it for recovery of the property
in the possession of respondents-defendants and for declaration of ownership
thereof as against said respondents’ contrary claim of ownership on the ground
of alleged lack of jurisdiction. Such
action was clearly an accion publiciana for the recovery of the right to
possess (possession de jure) (if not an accion reivindicatoria)
falling within the lower court’s jurisdiction and not a mere action for
detainer to recover physical possession (possession de facto) which
would fall within the jurisdiction of the municipal court (if filed within one
year after unlawful deprivation or withholding of possession) as erroneously
held by the lower court in its dismissal order.
Petitioners as plaintiffs in the Court of First Instance of
Bulacan had filed on April 1, 1968 an action which they termed as one to quiet
title to a certain residential lot in Barrio San Sebastian, Hagonoy, Bulacan
with an area of 368.5 square meters and to recover the possession thereof from
respondents as defendants,[1]
wherein they made the following averments:
“2. That plaintiffs are owners pro-indiviso of a
certain residential lot situated in the Barrio of San Sebastian, Hagonoy,
Bulacan, and more particularly bounded and described as follows:
(Description omitted)
“3. That through the tolerance and goodwill of
plaintiffs, thru the intervention and entreaty of one Maximo Santos, father of
the defendants, the latter used and occupied said land free of charge, under
the following conditions, to wit: (a)
that instead of paying rentals on the premises defendants undertook to pay the
corresponding real estate taxes on the land; and (b) that said defendants will
leave and vacate the premises anytime the plaintiffs so demand;
“4. That sometime in February, 1968, plaintiffs
verbally notified defendants that said plaintiffs were in need of the land,
hence, said defendants should vacate and leave the same, but said defendants
unreasonably refused at the same time claiming ownership of the property,
and alleging further that they bought the same from a certain Pablo Aguinaldo;
“5. That in order to quiet the title of
ownership over this land, the plaintiffs have been compelled to institute
the present action and, as a consequence, she suffered damages in the sum of
One Thousand Pesos (P1,000.00), Philippine Currency, as attorney’s fees;
“6. That the defendants thru their acts stated
above have therefore maliciously and unlawfully detained the land of plaintiffs
since February, 1968; and
“7. That for the unlawful occupation of the land,
an estimate of Fifty (P50.00) Pesos monthly rental is hereby claimed as
reasonable damages suffered by plaintiffs since February, 1968.”[2]
Petitioners accordingly prayed in their complaint for judgment
(a) “declaring [them] to be the owners of the property described…..”;
(b) “ordering the defendants to vacate the premises and return the
possession of the same to plaintiffs”; (c) “ordering the defendants
to pay plaintiffs, jointly and severally, the sum of Fifty Pesos (P50.00),
Philippine Currency, rental or damages every month effective the first day of
February, 1968, until the possession of the premises is finally restored in
favor of plaintiffs”; and further ordering defendants to pay them (d)
P1,000.00 attorney’s fees and (e) costs of suit.
Upon respondents’ motion to dismiss the complaint on the ground
that “the court has no jurisdiction over the nature of the action or
suit” and that the action embodied in petitioners’ complaint “is
actually one for ejectment or unlawful detainer. Consequently, the case falls within the
original exclusive jurisdiction of the inferior court or municipal court”
as against petitioners’ opposition that “plaintiffs’ complaint is
principally one to quiet title to property, the question of possession being
merely reduced to an incidental issue,” the lower court issued its appealed
order of August 15, 1968, finding the motion to dismiss to be “well
founded” and dismissing the case “for lack of jurisdiction.” The
lower court reasoned that:
“A perusal of the actual averments of facts in the complaint
do not reveal any allegation of ultimate facts which could sufficiently
support an action to quiet title. Upon
the other hand, it is plain that the allegations of facts are only constitutive
of an action for unlawful detainer. The
allegation in paragraph 5 of said complaint ‘that in order to quiet the title
of ownership over this land, the plaintiffs have been compelled to institute
the present action x x x’ is not sufficient by itself to consider this case as
an action for quieting title under Article 476 of the New Civil Code. Neither does the prayer of said complaint
asking that the plaintiffs be declared the owners of the property in question
constitute a cause of action.”
Hence, the present petition for review and setting aside of the
dismissal order, which the Court finds to be meritorious. The lower court was clearly in error in
issuing its dismissal order on its mistaken notion “that the allegations
of facts are only constitutive of an action for unlawful detainer” since
the complaint shows on its face that respondents’ refusal to deliver the
possession of the property was due to their adverse claim of ownership of the
same property and their counter-allegation that they had bought the same from a
certain Pablo Aguinaldo, and, therefore, petitioners’ action was clearly one
for recovery of their right to possess the property (possession de jure),
as well as to be declared the owners thereof as against the contrary claim of
respondents.
As restated by the late Chief Justice Moran: “There are
three kinds of actions for the recovery of possession of real property, namely,
(1) the summary action for forcible entry or detainer (denominated accion
interdictal under the former law of procedure, Ley de Enjuiciamiento
Civil), which seeks the recovery of physical possession only and is brought
within one year in the justice of the peace court; (2) the accion publiciana,
which is for the recovery of the right to possess and is a plenary action in an
ordinary civil proceeding in a Court of First Instance; and (3) accion de
reivindicacion, which seeks the recovery of ownership (which of course
includes the jus utendi and the jus fruendi), also brought in the
Court of First Instance.”[3]
It has been said that “(T)he only issue in forcible entry
and detainer cases is the physical possession of real property –
possession de facto and not possession de jure. If plaintiff can prove a prior possession
in himself, he may recover such possession even from the owner himself. Whatever may be the character of his prior
possession, if he has in his favor priority of time, he has the security that
entitles him to stay on the property until he is lawfully ejected by a person
having a better right by either accion publiciana or accion reivindicatoria.”[4]
Petitioners’ action was not merely for recovery of possession de facto. Their action was clearly one of accion
publiciana for recovery of posession de jure, if not one of accion
reivindicatoria for declaration of their ownership of the land.
As reaffirmed by the Court in the analogous case of Aguilon
vs. Bohol,[5]
petitioners’ action is at least “an accion publiciana, which action
‘corresponde al que tiene derecho a la posesion, contra el que posee sin
derecho ó con titulo menos firme, para que se ponga la cosa en poder del actor
con todas las accesiones, frutos, etc.’ (I Enciclopedia Juridica Española
450),” and such accion publiciana or the plenary action in an
ordinary civil proceeding to determine the better and legal right to possess
(independently of title) clearly falls within the jurisdiction of the Courts of
First Instance and not of the Municipal Courts.
The Court further underscored therein “that an action for recovery
of possession is an urgent matter which must be decided promptly to forestall
breaches of peace, violence or even loss of life and, therefore, the court
should act swiftly and expeditiously in cases of that nature.”
Petitioners, therefore, correctly filed their accion
publiciana before the lower court as against respondents’ claim that they
should instead have filed a summary action for detainer in the municipal
court. Having been fully apprised of
respondents’ refusal to surrender possession and their contrary claim of
ownership of the same property, petitioners properly filed their accion
publiciana with the Court of First Instance to avoid getting enmeshed in
what would certainly have been another jurisdictional dispute, since they
could reasonably foresee that if indeed they had filed a summary action for
illegal detainer instead in the municipal court, respondents would then have
contended, contrary to their present claim, that the municipal court is without
jurisdiction over the detainer case by virtue of their contrary claim of
ownership of the property.[6]
ACCORDINGLY, judgment is hereby rendered, setting aside
the lower court’s dismissal order of August 15, 1968 and the case is remanded
to respondent Court of First Instance with instructions to expedite the
proceedings and trial and determination thereof on the merits. With costs against respondents. This decision is immediately executory.
Makasiar, Fernandez, Guerrero, De Castro, and Melencio-Herrera, JJ., concur.
[1]
Civil Case No. 3648-M, Court of First Instance of Bulacan, entitled
“Artemio C. Reyes and Hilarion C. Reyes, Plaintiffs, vs. Hilaria Santos
Vda. de Lopez and Pilar Santos, Defendants.”
[2]
Note in parenthesis and emphasis supplied.
[3]
Moran’s Comments on the Rules of Court, 1970 Ed, p. 298.
[4]
Idem, at pp. 303-304.
[5]
79 SCRA 482 (1977).
[6] It
is to be noted, however, that in R.A. 5967 enacted on June 21, 1969, enlarging
the jurisdiction of city courts, said city courts have now been granted the
concurrent jurisdiction with courts of first instance “in ejectment cases
where the question of ownership is brought in issue in the pleadings, the issue
of ownership shall therein be resolved in conjunction with the issue of
possession.” (Sec. 3 [c]).