ABUNDIA ESPINA, PETITIONER, VS. COURT OF APPEALS, DEMETRIA VILAS VDA. DE PINILI, ALFONSO ARTUS AND AGUSTINA DELA RIARTE, RESPONDENTS.

This is a petition to review on certiorari the decision^[1]
of the Court of Appeals affirming that of the Regional Trial Court of Dumaguete
City which dismissed petitioner’s action for reconveyance against private
respondents.

The property in dispute is a 744-square
meter lot which is a portion of Lot 2723 of the Dumaguete Cadastre, situated at
Taclobo, Dumaguete City, registered on 27 October 1922 in the name of Rufina Lazaga under Original Certificate of
Title No. 66-A. On 16 February 1939,
Geronimo Pinili, deceased husband of private respondent Demetria Vilas Vda. de
Pinili, acquired one-half (1/2) of said Lot 2723, which contained a total area
of 2,402 square meters, as evidenced by TCT No. T-5448 issued in his name,^[2]
while the other half was purchased by a certain Alfonso Artus. The 744-square meter lot in dispute is part
of the portion now owned by private respondents.

Petitioner now seeks the reconveyance of the disputed lot as she
alleges that the property is owned by her mother, Maria Lazaga, who had it
declared in her name in 1915 for taxation purposes, and that she and her mother
have been in the peaceful and public possession and enjoyment thereof. She asserts that by means of deceit and
fraud, the disputed property was included and made part of Lot 2723 and
subsequently registered in the name of Rufina Lazaga under OCT No. 66-A. Petitioner claims that she discovered the
fraud only sometime in 1985 when private respondents required her tenants to
pay rentals to them.

Private respondents in turn maintain that they are the owners of
the land in dispute, which is registered in their names under TCT No. T-1365,^[3]
and that petitioner’s predecessor-in-interest, Maria Lazaga, does not even
appear to be a survey claimant in Lot
2723 in the 1918 cadastral proceedings.

In affirming the judgment of the trial court, the respondent
appellate court held –

“x x x x It appears that the land was the subject of cadastral
proceedings (Case No. 2, G. L. R. O. Cad. Rec. No. 141) held way back in 1918,
but Maria Lazaga did not file an answer to claim any interest in the land as
required by Act No. 2259, sec. 9. The
proceedings are in rem and, therefore,
plaintiff-appellant’s predecessor-in-interest could not have been unaware of
them. Yet Maria Lazaga never saw fit to
intervene. It would defeat the purpose
for instituting cadastral proceedings if after several years (in this case 63
years) a party could still claim ownership of a land adjudicated in those
proceedings to another party.

“But plaintiff-appellant claims that her
predecessor-in-interest, Maria Lazaga, was in possession of the 744 square
meters of land in dispute since 1914 until her death. The claim is based on a tax declaration (TD No. 7713) for 1915,
allegedly covering the land in question. This tax declaration (Exh. ‘F‘), however, appears to cover a
different land with an area of
320 square meters, whereas later tax declarations, which according to
plaintiff-appellant superseded this tax declaration, cover a land area of 744
square meters. And indeed
plaintiff-appellant is seeking the reconveyance to her of a piece of land with
an area of 744 square meters. Moreover, the owners of adjoining
properties, serving as the boundaries of the land in question, are not only
different from the owners mentioned in the later tax declarations (Exhs. ‘A’,
‘B’, ‘D’ and ‘E’) but the areas
of their lands are likewise different.”^[4]

Petitioner assails respondent appellate court for going beyond
the issues raised in the briefs of the parties, and against their admissions as
well as the findings of fact of the trial court. She claims that private respondents did not raise as issue before
the appellate court whether the tax declarations marked Exhs. “A” to
“F”, inclusive, were those pertaining to the land in controversy, and
that the presentation of these tax declarations, which were in fact admitted by
the trial court, was never opposed by private respondents. She also contends that respondent appellate
court misapprehended or distorted the facts when it ruled that the tax
declarations offered by petitioner pertained to a different parcel of
land. It is her position that tax declarations marked as Exhs.
“A”, “B”, “C”, “D” and “E”
were consecutively issued from 19 November 1914 up to the year 1980, and the
same consistently reflected the name of her predecessor-in-interest, Maria
Lazaga, as well as the adjacent areas and boundary owners of the property.

A careful study of the petition reveals that it raises factual
issues which this Court could have dismissed outright under Rule 45 of the
Rules of Court. But We brushed aside
technicalities and gave due course to the petition if only to be satisfied that
respondent Court of Appeals did not, contrary to the petition, misapprehend the
facts.

We have scrutinized the records and We sustain the decision of
respondent Court of Appeals when it held that the 1915 tax declaration of
petitioner, Exh. “F”, pertains
to a parcel of land with an area of 320 square meters, different from that
belonging to private respondents. The
later tax declarations,^[5]
which petitioner claims to have superseded the 1915 tax declaration, cover a
parcel of land with an area of
744 square meters. Significantly, the
adjoining owners and their respective areas appearing in the 1915 tax
declaration are likewise different. In
the 1915 tax declaration, the adjoining owners are Mauricio Larena, Gaudencia
Laraga, Rufina Laraga and Mateo Lorico; in
the later tax declarations, the adjoining owners are Protacio Lazalita,
Catalina Lazaga, Rufina Lazaga and Clara Lorico.

It may be worth stressing that Lot 2723 was the subject of
cadastral proceedings in 1918.^[6]
However, petitioner’s predecessor-in-interest, Maria Lazaga, did not intervene
to claim an interest as required by Act No. 2259, as amended, otherwise known
as the Cadastral Act. Such
proceedings being in rem are thus binding upon the whole world.

As regards petitioner’s contention that the Court of Appeals
considered grounds other than those touched upon in the decision of the trial
court, it is settled that the appellate court may uphold the judgment of a
lower court on grounds other than those relied upon by the trial court.^[7]
In fact, even if issues are not formally and specifically raised on appeal,
they may nevertheless be considered as long as they are closely related to the
error properly assigned or upon which the determination of the question raised
by the error properly assigned is dependent.^[8] The Court of Appeals, in the case
before Us, can hardly be said to have treated issues not brought before the
court a quo. What
the appellate court merely did was to make a strict scrutiny of the evidence on
record, and that its ruling that petitioner’s Exh. “F” pertains to a
different land does not mean it violated the principle that an issue which has
not been raised in the court a quo cannot be raised for the first time
on appeal. Simply put, all that
respondent Court of Appeals did was to take into account a ground or issue
closely related to or intimately interwoven with the error properly assigned.

WHEREFORE, the petition for review is DENIED for lack
of merit. Costs against petitioner.

SO ORDERED.

Cruz, (Chairman), Padilla, and
Griño-Aquino, JJ., concur.

Medialdea, J., on leave.

^[1]
Penned by Justice Vicente V. Mendoza,
concurred in by Justice Oscar M. Herrera and Justice Alicia V. Sempio Diy.

^[2]
Exh. “2”.

^[3]
Exh. “3”.

^[4]
CA Decision, pp. 4-5; Rollo, pp.
21-22.

^[5]
Exhs. “A” to “E”, inclusive.

^[6]
Case No. 2, G.L.R.O. Cad. Rec. No. 141.

^[7]
Vda. de Carillo v. de Paz, No. L-22601, 28 October 1966, 18 SCRA 467,
citing Valdez v. Tuason, 40 Phil. 943 (1920).

^[8]
Roman Catholic Archbishop v. Court of Appeals, G.R. Nos. 77425 and
77450, 19 June 1991; 198 SCRA 300.