PLACIDO ESCUDERO (DECEASED) AND CLAUDIA MARASIGAN, IN HER OWN BEHALF AND AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF THE DECEASED PLACIDO ESCUDERO, APPLICANTS AND APPELLEES, VS. CORNELIO…

It appears from the record of the present case that on September
14, 1920, the herein appellees applied for the registration of a tract
of land measuring nearly 58 hectares and situated in the barrio of San
Jose, municipality of San Pablo, Laguna, and that on December 24, 1921,
the Court of First Instance rendered a decision ordering the
registration of the land. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court by the
Director of Lands, the judgment of the court below was affirmed in a
decision promulgated November 24,1922.^[1]

On December 23, 1922, less than thirty days after the promulgation
of the decision of the Supreme Court, the appellant, Cornelio Esguerra,
filed a motion for review in which he alleged that he was the owner of
over 10 hectares of land within the area registered”; that he had been
in quiet and pacific possession of the same for over ten years; that he
had received no notice of the aforesaid land registration proceedings
and had been fraudulently deprived of his property. He therefore prayed
that after trial and presentation of evidence, the decree be reviewed
and that the land claimed by him be excluded from said decree in
accordance with Act No. 496. The motion was set down for hearing on
January 29, 1923, and on June 8,1923, the court below rendered a
so-called decision in which it was recited that Cornelio Esguerra was
one of the boundary men of the registered land; that he had not been
notified of the land registration proceedings; that, therefore, on the
authority of the case of Estiva vs. Alvero (37 Phil., 497), the
registration had been obtained by fraud, and it was ordered that
Cornelio Esguerra “within the term of ten days from notice of the
order, present an escrito de oposicion accompanied by a plan
or at least by a sketch sufficiently clear and comprehensive to
indicate the true situation, area and boundary of the land which he
claims.”

In compliance with this order, Esguerra presented his escrito de oposicion
on March 25, 1924, and the case was set down for trial upon the merits.
After receiving the rather voluminous evidence of both parties, the
court, on May 22, 1924, rendered an exhaustive and well prepared
decision in which it found that Esguerra owned no land or real interest
therein within the limits of the area registered and that he was not a
boundary man at the time of the registration of the property and,
therefore, not entitled to special notification of the proceedings, and
that the applicants for registration, in failing to specially notify
him, had not acted in bad faith. In the final or dispositive clause of
the decision, the court says: “For the reasons stated, the motion for
review is hereby denied and the order of this court of June 8, 1923, is
set aside and, as soon as this decision becomes final, let a
certificate of title to the land described in the application be issued
in the name of Claudia Marasigan, as widow and at the same time
judicial administratrix of the estate of the deceased Placido
Escudero.” From this decision, Esguerra appeals to this court and
presents five assignments of error.

Under the first three assignments, counsel for the appellant-
argues that the “decision of June 8, 1923, was a final adjudication of
the alleged facts that the original registration was fraudulent and
that the land belonging to Esguerra had been included in the area
registered.” This contention cannot be sustained. The dispositive
clause of that decision shows that it was merely an interlocutory order
by which the claimant Esguerra was given the opportunity to file his
claim in proper form and present his evidence. Such an order, whether
it is called a decision or not, cannot be an adjudication of the
ultimate rights of the parties; the court is not in position to finally
determine the matter at issue until all the evidence is before it.

Counsel also argues that the court erred in holding that under
section 38 of the Land Registration Act, a petitioner for review must
show a “derecho dominical o real” before he can become entitled to the
reopening of a final decree of registration. The expression “derecho
real” is taken from the Spanish translation of the words “estate or
interest” found in the English text of section 38, supra, and
it is insisted that the two versions are not synonymous. In our opinion
the distinction sought to be drawn is too fine to be of any practical
importance. The interest referred to in the section mentioned is a real
interest and not merely a pretended or imaginary one; in other words,
it must be a “derecho real.”

It appears that the trial court declined to receive evidence
offered by the appellant tending to show that in a composition title
upon which the applicant in part relied for his title, the land
description was entirely different from that contained in the
application for registration, and counsel for appellant maintains that
this is a reversible error. We do not think so. The question at issue
was whether the petitioner for a review had been deprived of land or
any interest therein through the registration in question and the
burden was upon him to show affirmatively that he had such interest; if
he failed to do so, the decree would stand and could not be disturbed.
In the circumstances, the court was, therefore, justified in requiring
the petitioner for review to show affirmatively that his legal
interests were adversely affected by said registration before allowing
him to reopen the case as to the whole tract described in the decree
and of which the portion claimed by the petitioner was only a fraction.
It may also be noted that the fact that a composition title does not
correctly describe the land subsequently registered is not of
controlling importance if, as here, it is shown that the land is that
of which the holder of the title went into possession and of which he
remained in possession for a sufficient length of time to acquire title
by prescription and to meet the requirements of the Public Land Act as
to registration.

The fourth and fifth assignments of error relate to questions of
fact in regard to which the findings of the court below are, in our
opinion, fully sustained by the evidence. We agree with that court in
its appreciation of the testimony of the witness Marto Encarnacion.

The judgment appealed from is affirmed with the costs against the appellant. So ordered.

Avanceña, C. J., Street, Malcolm, Villamor, Johns, Romualdez, and Villa-Real, JJ., concur.

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^[1] Escudero and Marasigan vs. Director of Lands (44 Phil., 83).