ANDRES ELUMBARING PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. HERMOGENES ELUMBARING, DEFENDANT AND APPELLEE.

Elumbaring versus Elumbaring

The Case

This is Elumbaring versus Elumbaring, a case decided by the Supreme Court in January 1909, in which Andres Elumbaring sued Hermogenes Elumbaring to recover the possession of a parcel of land in Sulangon, in the municipality of Dapitan, and to recover damages for its illegal detention. The action is one of ejectment, and the plaintiff anchors his claim on a purchase made in September 1896 from one Timoteo Carreon. The case matters to the reviewee for two enduring reasons: it fixes the rule that a justice of the peace, being a court of special and limited jurisdiction, cannot by his mere act of acknowledgment convert a private deed into a public document; and it restates the classic rule in ejectment that the plaintiff must prevail on the strength of his own title, not on the weakness of the defendant's.

Procedural History

Andres Elumbaring commenced the action in the Court of First Instance in March 1907. After trial, the lower court held that the plaintiff had not shown that he was the owner of the land, and dismissed the action, with costs against the plaintiff. The plaintiff appealed, assigning four errors: the refusal to admit Exhibit A as a public instrument; the refusal to admit the stubbooks and the duplicate of the affidavit, Exhibits B and C, merely because those documents named Banonong while the complaint named Sulangon; the ruling that there was no evidence that Timoteo Carreon owned the land when he sold it; and the ruling that in an action for eviction the plaintiff must not base his claim on the insufficiency of the defendant's title but on the validity of his own. The case then reached the Supreme Court by ordinary appeal from the judgment of the lower court.

Facts

The plaintiff alleged that on the third of September 1896 he purchased the land from Timoteo Carreon, paying the vendor a carabao and some rice. About two thirds of the land was devoted to rice and the rest to fruit trees, and in or about the year 1900 the plaintiff built a house upon it. The land was said to produce annually fifteen piculs of copra and one hundred cavanes of palay.

It was clearly proved at trial that the plaintiff had been in possession of the land at least from September 1896 until 1903 or 1904, when the defendant, by force and intimidation, took possession of it. The plaintiff offered a certified copy of the deed executed by Carreon before the justice of the peace of Dapitan, but the lower court rejected it on the ground that it had not been duly identified.

The defendant answered with a general denial and a special defense that the land had belonged to his father, Carlos Elumbaring, who left it to him by testament. He claimed that his father had purchased the land from Carreon, yet he admitted that he had no written evidence of that fact. The record also showed that Carlos Elumbaring permitted the plaintiff to occupy the land and to pay the taxes on it from September 1896 until his death in 1903, without objection.

Issues

• Whether or not the justice of the peace, in taking the acknowledgment of the deed of sale, validly converted it into a public document.
• Whether or not the lower court erred in rejecting the certified copy of the deed, the tax receipts, and the declaration of ownership offered by the plaintiff.
• Whether or not the plaintiff may recover possession of the land on the basis of his own title and prior possession, notwithstanding the weakness of the defendant's title.
• Whether or not the plaintiff is entitled to an award of damages.

Applicable Provisions

Article 3 of the Royal Decree of the King of Spain of the twenty ninth of May 1885 provides:

Justices of the peace, and, in their absence, the gobernadorcillos, shall perform the duties of such offices before a testigo de asistencia of legal age, who is in the enjoyment of all his civil rights and who can read and write correctly.

This provision defines the office of the justice of the peace and the witnesses of assistance who act with him, and it supplies the measure of his limited authority.

Article 9 of the same decree provides:

In the places where no escribanos reales or notaries public may exist, and it is impracticable to appoint ad interim officials, as provided in the preceding article, they shall be substituted in the exercise of the judicial authority by testigos de asistencia, in accordance with the laws and provisions now in force.

The Court read this provision as referring to the substitution of witnesses of assistance for notaries public and clerks of court, and not to any substitution of a justice of the peace in the place of a notary public.

Section 299 of the Code of Procedure in Civil Actions provides that public records kept in the Philippine Islands of private writings are public writings, and that a copy of the same, duly certified to be true, should be admissible in evidence the same as the original writing. This is the provision that made the certified copy of the recorded deed admissible.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the justice of the peace had no authority to take the acknowledgment so as to make the deed a public document. Courts of justices of the peace are courts of special and limited jurisdiction and have no authority except that expressly imposed by law. Justices of the peace were not expressly authorized by law to take the acknowledgment of documents of this class, and the mere fact that the justice did so did not make the document public. Article 1216 of the Civil Code therefore did not apply to it. The Court nevertheless held that the document was actually made and signed by the parties and recorded in the records of the justice of the peace, and was therefore a private document binding upon the parties, which should have been admitted to show their rights and relations under its terms.

On the second issue, the Court held that the certified copy was admissible under Section 299, because it was certified to be a true copy of the record of the justice of the peace. As to the tax receipts, the Court held that they are no evidence of the right of ownership nor of the right of possession of land, and that payment of taxes does not alone constitute sufficient evidence of title. The declaration of ownership could not by itself prove ownership, but taken together with the deed of purchase it constituted some proof of the plaintiff's good faith in occupying and retaining possession.

On the third issue, the Court, expressly without passing upon ownership and confining itself to the right of possession, held that the plaintiff had been in the quiet, peaceable and uninterrupted enjoyment of possession under the contract of sale from September 1896 until he was dispossessed, while the defendant showed no evidence of his right to possess beyond his actual, manual possession. The Court restated the governing rule:

The plaintiff, in an action of ejectment to recover the possession of land, claiming to be the owner thereof, can not recover such possession on the theory that the one in possession has no title to the land.

It added that the period of prescription had not yet expired, so the plaintiff could not lose his right to recover possession merely because he did not bring his action in the court of the justice of the peace within one year after he had been forcibly ejected.

On the fourth issue, the Court held that although the complaint laid a proper foundation for the claim of damages, the plaintiff failed to present evidence sufficient to support a judgment for damages, and so the Court made no finding on that claim.

Doctrine

A justice of the peace is a court of special and limited jurisdiction and possesses only such authority as is expressly conferred by law. He cannot, by the mere act of taking an acknowledgment, convert a private deed into a public document, and Article 1216 of the Civil Code does not apply to such a deed. The deed remains a private document binding upon the parties, and a certified copy of it as recorded is admissible under Section 299 of the Code of Procedure in Civil Actions.

Tax receipts and a declaration of ownership for taxation are not proof of title; at most, joined with a deed of purchase, they show the good faith of the possessor.

In ejectment, the plaintiff's right to recover depends upon his own title, not upon the weakness of the defendant's title. A contract of sale, even as a private document, is effective between the parties and is good against a third person who has no better evidence of title.

Disposition

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the lower court and held that the plaintiff is entitled to the immediate possession of the land, ordering that a writ of possession issue to put him in possession, with no finding on damages.

Remember This

Memorize this line: a justice of the peace cannot make a private deed public by acknowledging it, and in ejectment the plaintiff must stand on his own title, not on the weakness of the defendant's. Examiners use this case to test the limited jurisdiction of justices of the peace, the private versus public character of documents, and the rule that tax receipts are not proof of title.