PHILIPPINE BANKING CORPORATION, REPRESENTING THE ESTATE OF JUSTINA SANTOS Y CANON FAUSTINO DECEASED, PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, VS. LUI SHE, IN HER OWN BEHALF AND AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF…

This is the second motion that the defendant-appellant has filed
relative to this Court’s decision of September
12, 1967.  The
first was a motion for reconsideration. 
Accepting the nullity of the other contracts (Plff
Exhs. 4-7), the defendant-appellant nevertheless
contended that the lease contract (Plff Exh. 3) is so separable from the rest of the contracts that
it should be saved from invalidation.

In denying the
motion, we pointed to the circumstances ?

“that on November 15, 1957, the parties entered into the lease contract for 50 years; that ten days after, that is
on November 25, they amended the contract so as to make it cover the entire
property of Justine Santos; that on December 21, less than a month after, they
entered into another contract giving Wong
Heng the option to buy the leased premises
should his pending petition for naturalization be granted; that on November 18,
1958, after failing to secure
naturali­zation and after finding that adoption does not confer the citizenship
of the adopting parent on the adopted, the parties entered into two other
contracts extending the lease to 99 years and fixing the period of the option to
buy at 50 years.”

which indubitably demonstrated that each
of the contracts in question was designed to carry out Justina
Santos’ expressed wish to give the land to Wong and thereby in effect place its
ownership in alien hands,^[1]
about which we shall have something
more to say toward the end of this resolution. 
We concluded that “as the lease contract was part of a scheme to violate the Constitution
it suffers from the same infirmity that renders the other contracts void and
can no more be saved from illegality than the rest of the contracts.”

The present motion is for a new trial and is based on three
documents executed by Justina Santos which, so it is
claimed, constitute newly-discovered material evidence.  These documents are a codicil dated November 11, 1957 and two wills
executed on August 24 and August 29,
1959.  In the codicil,
Justine Santos not only named Tita Yaptinchay LaO the administratrix of her estate with the right to buy the
properties of the estate, but also provided that if the said La0 was legally
disqualified from buying (as she really was under article 1491(3) of the Civil
Code), she was to be her sole heir.  In
either case, the codicil imposed on the administratrix
the obligation to have masses said for the soul of the testratrix
and of the latter’s sister and parents. 
On the other hand, in both her 1959 wills Justina
Santos enjoined her heirs to respect the lease contract made, and the
conditional option given, in favor of Wong.

These documents form part of the records of civil case 59470 of the Court of First Instance
of Manila in which the settlement of the estate of Justina
Santos is pending, and so it is now claimed that they could not have been
produced at the trial of this case which was concluded on August 6, 1960 because they were presented in
the probate court only after the death of Justine Santos on December 28, 1964.

This is a misrepresentation of the grossest sort.  The documents were known to the
defendant-appellant and her counsel even before the death of Justina Santos.  As a
matter of fact, the wills executed on August 24 and August 29, 1959 were presented in this case as
Exhibits 285 and 279, respectively,
for the defendant-appellant, and were considered and expressly referred to in
the decision of the lower court and in our decision.  As for the codicil of November 11, 1957, the defendant-appellant can hardly
feign ignorance of its existence even when this case was being tried in the
lower court, considering that its provisions were substantially adverted to in
the testimony of one of her own witnesses^[2]
and were in fact recited in the decision a quo.^[3]
By no means can the documents in question be considered newly -discovered
evidence so as to warrant a reopening of this case.^[4]

Nor is there anything in the documents that is likely to alter
the result we have already
reached in this case.  With respect to
the 1957 codicil, it is claimed that Justina Santos
could not have intended by the 99-year lease to give Wong the ownership of the
land considering that she had earlier (the codicil was made on November 11,
1957 while the lease contract was executed
on November 15, 1957) devised the property to Tita Yaptinchay LaO.

Without passing on the validity of her testamentary disposition
since the issue is one pending before the probate court, it suffices to state
here that even granting that Justina Santos had
devised the land in dispute to LaO, Justina Santos was not thereby barred or precluded from
subsequently giving the land to Wong. 
The execution of the lease contract which, together with the other
contracts, amount to a transfer of ownership to Wong, constitutes an implied
revocation of her codicil, at least insofar as the disposition of the land is
concerned.^[5]

As for the 1959 wills, it is said that they manifest a desire to
abide by the law, as is evident from the statement therein that Wong’s right to
buy the land be allowed “anytime he or his children should be entitled to
buy lands in the Philippines
(i.e., upon becoming Filipino citizens)”.  It seems obvious, however, that this is
nothing but a reiteration of the substance of the lease contract and the
conditional option to buy which in combination, as our decision demonstrates,
amount to a conveyance – the protestation of compliance with the law
notwithstand­ing.  In cases like the one
at bar, motives are seldom avowed and avowals are not always candid.  The problem is not, however, insuperable,
especially as in this case the very witnesses for the defendant-appellant
testified that ?

“Considering her age, ninety (90) years old at the time and
her condition, she is a wealthy woman, it is just natural when she said ‘This is what I, want and this will be
done.’ In particular refer­ence to this contract of lease, when I
said ‘This is not proper,’ she said – ‘You just go ahead, you prepare that, I am the owner, and if there is illegality, I
the only one that can
question the illegality.’”^[6]

“The ambition of the old woman before
her death, according to her revelation to me, was to see to it that these
properties be enjoyed, even to own them, by Wong Heng because Doña Justina told me that she did not have any relatives, near
or far, and she considered Wong Heng as a son and his
children her grandchildren; especially her consolation in life was when she
would hear the children reciting prayers in Tagalog.”^[7]

“She was very emphatic in the care of the
seventeen (17) dogs and of the maids who helped her much, and she told me to
see to it that no one could disturb Wong
Hang from those properties.  That is
why we thought of adoption, believing that thru adoption Wong Hong might
acquire Filipino citizenship; being the adopted child of a Filipino citizen.”^[8]

The other points raised
in the motion for new trial either have already been disposed of in our
decision or are so insubstantial to
merit any attention.

ACCORDINGLY, the motion for new trial is denied.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, JBL, Dizon, Makalintal, Bengzon, Zaldivar, Sanchez,
Angeles, and Fernando, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Resolution, Oct. 5, 1967.

^[2]
T.s.n., p. 82, June 20, 1960.

^[3]
Decision, Sept. 16, 1960,
Rec. on Appeal 208, 212 n. 1.

^[4]
Cf. Bersabal v. Bernal, 13 Phil. 463
(1909).

^[5]
Civ. Code arts. 830(1) and 957.

^[6]
Testimony of Atty. Tomas Yumol, T.s.n.,
p. 86, June 20, 1960
(emphasis added)

^[7]
Testimony of Atty. Benjamin Alonzo, t.s.n., p. 79, July 6, 1960
(emphasis added).

^[8]
Id., t.s.n., p. 121, June
20, 1960.