PHILIPPINE MANUFACTURING CO., PETITIONER, VS. HONORABLE CARLOS A. IMPERIAL, JUDGE OF FIRST INSTANCE OF MANILA, ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

This is an original petition in this court by which the petitioner, the
Philippine Manufacturing Co., seeks relief, under section 513 of the
Code of Civil Procedure, from an order entered on June 18, 1925, by the
respondent judge, Honorable Carlos A. Imperial, of the Court of First
Instance of the City of Manila, in the cadastral proceeding G. L. R.
O., cadastral record No. 373, whereby a part of lot 35, block No. 3035,
covered by transfer certificate of title No. 3936, is alleged to have
been improperly adjudged to the respondents named Cabañgis. Upon the
coming in of the petition an order was made for the respondents to
appear and show cause, if any there be, why the relief prayed for
should not be granted. Upon this the respondent judge appeared in
person and answered, admitting for the most part the allegations of the
petition but denying the petitioner’s title to relief upon the facts
stated. The Director of Lands also appeared, through the Acting
Attorney-General, and admitted all the paragraphs of the petition, with
the exception of the allegation that the petitioner is the owner of the
entire lot No. 35 as originally registered, and asserted that the
portion of the lot designated as lot No. 39 in the cadastral, belongs
to the Government of the Philippine Islands, as a part of the foreshore
land. This respondent makes common cause with the petitioner in asking
that the decree be opened. The respondents bearing the name Cabañgis
appeared by their attorney and demurred on the ground that, upon the
facts stated in the petition, the remedy provided in section 513 of the
Code of Civil Procedure is not appropriate, inasmuch as the petitioner
has an adequate remedy by course of appeal from the order against which
relief is sought. So far as concerns the problem now presented the case
is in about the same position as if it had been submitted on an answer
admitting the material facts.

It appears that on July 20,
1912, one Tomas Cabañgis sold and conveyed to the Manila Refining Co. a
parcel of land located on the Manila Bay at the end of Calle Velasquez,
in the District of Tondo, Manila. The Manila Refining Co. in turn
conveyed this property to the Philippine Manufacturing Co., the present
petitioner. Not long thereafter the Philippine Manufacturing Co.
submitted a petition to the Court of Land Registration for the
registration of said land in its name (case No. 8425). In said
proceeding the property mentioned was decreed and adjudicated to the
petitioner and a certificate of title, No. 3936, was issued to it for
said land.

On February 11, 1922, the respondent Director of
Lands instituted a cadastral proceeding in the Court of First Instance
of the City of Manila, G. L. R. O., Cad. Rec. No. 373, asking that the
ownership be determined and title adjudicated to certain land in the
Tondo district of the City of Manila, including therein the land which
had, as already stated, been registered in the name of the Philippine
Manufacturing Co. For the purposes of the cadastral survey, the land
included in the petitioner’s title, No. 3936, was subdivided into three
lots, namely, Nos. 31, 32, and 35, block 3035.

In said
cadastral proceeding the Court of First Instance, in the character of a
land court, on January 16, 1928, entered a general default as to all
unclaimed lots not already covered by Torrens titles. On June
7, 1923, the same court entered a decree with reference to various lots
in the cadastral, but it refrained from making any specific
adjudication with reference to said three lots, merely noting that
these lots had already been decreed in case No. 8425 and that they
appeared in the cadastral plan against the name of the Philippine
Manufacturing Co.

With respect to lots Nos. 31 and 32, block
3035, no question has arisen, but with respect to lot No. 35, which is
in part the subject of the present controversy, the following facts are
to be noted: Said lot, as already indicated, is contiguous with the
Manila Bay; and in 1916 the Government raised a question as to whether
some of the land included in lot No. 35 had been properly registered in
the name of the petitioner,—the Government contending that the portion
of said lot referred to was foreshore land and had not been covered by
the decree. The petitioner admits that it yielded to this contention of
the Government and took a lease from the Government covering the land
claimed by the latter as foreshore land. Roughly speaking, the entire
lot No. 35 is in the form of a quadrilateral, and the portion claimed
by the Government as foreshore land comprises approximately the half
lying west of a diagonal line drawn from near the southern corner
approximately to the northern corner of the same lot.

It
further appears that on September 12, 1923, the chief surveyor of the
General Land Registration Office informed the respondent judge that lot
No. 35 of the cadastral survey should be subdivided’, observing that
part thereof had not been decreed in the original registration case No.
8425. Pursuant to this information the respondent judge directed the
Director of Lands to cause lot No. 35 to be subdivided so as to form a
new and separate lot of the portion which should be found not to have
been decreed in the registration case. Accordingly a surveyor of the
Bureau of Lands made a new plan, subdividing lot No. 35 so as to form
two lots, indicated as lot No. 35 new and lot No. 39. Lot No. 35 new
comprises the portion of lot No. 35 awarded to the petitioner without
question, while lot No. 39 comprises the portion supposedly not
included in the registration decree.

The petitioner,
doubtless relying upon its Torrens title, made no claim to any part of
the original lot No. 35, in the cadastral proceeding and was at no time
given any notice of any of the proceedings taken by the court with
reference to the subdividing of said lot, nor of the subsequent action
taken by the court with respect thereto, except of the decision
presently to be mentioned.

It appears, however, that on
March 19, 1925, the respondents bearing the name Cabañgis, heirs of
Tomas Cabañgis, interposed a claim in the cadastral proceeding with
respect to lot No. 39, alleging that they were the owners thereof; and
on June 18, 1925, the respondent judge heard the cause on proof
submitted by the Cabañgis heirs. As a result of this hearing, the judge
found that said heirs had been in possession of said lot No. 39,
through themselves and predecessors in interest, for more than forty
years, and he accordingly entered judgment awarding said lot to them in
equal shares. On June 26, 1925, a copy of this decision was served upon
the present petitioner, and on July 17 thereafter the petitioner
presented a petition to the respondent judge asking him to set aside
his decision of June 18, 1925, in order that the petitioner might come
in and make proof of its title to the land. On July 21, 1925, this
petition was denied, and the petitioner duly excepted, subsequently
tendering a bill of exceptions.

For the further purpose of
protecting its rights in the premises the petitioner instituted the
present proceeding for relief under section 513 of the Code of Civil
Procedure, with the result that the prosecution of the remedy by appeal
is dependent upon the outcome of the present proceeding.

Upon the facts above stated the question now to be determined is
whether the petitioner has any remedy by which it may procure the order
of June 18, 1925, awarding lot No. 39 to the Cabañgis heirs, to be set
aside, so that it may come in and submit proof in support of its
alleged title to said lot; and, supposing that it has a remedy, is that
remedy to be found in an appeal from the action of the respondent judge
on the petition of July 17, 1925, or in the present petition for relief
under section 513 of the Code of Civil Procedure?

Our reply
to this question is, first, that the case was a proper one for relief
in the lower court under section 113 of the Code of Civil Procedure;
secondly, that the order of the lower court of July 21, 1925, refusing
to set aside the order of June 18, 1925, was an appealable order; and,
thirdly, that the present original petition in this court cannot be
maintained.

That the situation was such as to justify relief
upon motion or petition under section 113 of the Code of Civil
Procedure is readily demonstrable. Having in its possession a Torrens
certificate of title covering the entire lot No. 35, which included the
new lot No. 39, the petitioner was not bound to appear formally as a
claimant to said property in the cadastral proceeding. It was the duty
of the court to respect that title, of the existence of which the court
was fully informed, and no part of said lot should have been
adjudicated to another without notification to the petitioner of the
hearing. In fact no default has ever been taken against the petitioner
with respect to any part of said lot, for all land covered by Torrens
titles was expressly reserved from the general default declared by the
court on January 16, 1923, and it must be considered that the
proceedings taken in this case behind the back of the petitioner were
taken against it by surprise and excusable neglect, within the meaning
of section 113 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

It will be
noted that when the present petitioner interposed its motion of July
17, 1925, asking the lower court to set aside the order which is the
subject of complaint, that court still had jurisdiction over the
controversy. In Caballes vs. Director of Lands and Court of
First Instance of Laguna (41 Phil., 357), we held that the remedy by
motion under section 113 of the Code of Civil Procedure cannot be
invoked in a Court of First Instance for the purpose of obtaining
relief from a decree adjudicating title in a land registration or
cadastral proceeding after the decree has become final, i. e.,
final in the sense that the time for appeal has passed and the court
has lost jurisdiction over the matter. But as was pointed out in
Larrobis vs. Wislizenus and Smith, Bell & Co. (42 Phil.,
401), there can be no question as to the propriety of a Judge of First
Instance giving relief under section 113 in a land case against any
order or judgment over which he still retains jurisdiction. The point
determined in the first of the two cases above cited was merely that
the full six-month period given in section 113 of the Code of Civil
Procedure cannot be allowed to extend the power of the court in land
cases beyond the natural period of its jurisdiction.

Now it
is familiar doctrine in this court that if a Court of First Instance
refuses in a proper case to grant relief upon a motion under section
118 of the Code of Civil Procedure, an appeal will lie from such action
to this court. The obvious reason is that such a motion is addressed to
the original jurisdiction of the court, being always based upon facts
not previously the subject of litigation. The right of appeal being
clear, it follows that the remedy here sought under section 513 of the
Code of Civil Procedure is not available. As was pointed out in the
case of Banco Español-Filipino vs. Palanca (37 Phil., 921,
948), the proceeding contemplated in section 513 was intended to
supplement the remedy provided by section 113; and this court will not
entertain a petition under the former section where the aggrieved party
has had an opportunity to obtain relief under the last mentioned
provision in the Court of First Instance. This consideration is fatal
to the maintenance of the present petition.

In the brief for the petitioner reference is made to the case of Tanedo and Bondoc vs.
Judge of First Instance of Tarlac (44 Phil., 179), where relief was
granted under section 513; but an examination of the opinion will show
that the existence of the order of default against which relief was
there sought was not discovered by the petitioner until long after the
Court of First Instance had lost jurisdiction over the matter, and as
was said in the opinion of this court, any application to the Court of
First Instance for the reopening of the case would have been useless.

Reliance is also placed by the petitioner upon the case of Director of Lands vs.
Santamaria and Javellana (44 Phil., 594), where this court upon
application for the writ of certiorari set aside an order of a Court of
First Instance opening a decree over which the court had lost
jurisdiction. The court there proceeded upon the ground that the
original order had become final and that the order complained of was
null and void. That case is not applicable to the situation before us,
in which the petition is properly addressed to this court under section
513 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and the jurisdiction of the Court
of First Instance to make the order complained of cannot be
successfully questioned.

For the reasons stated the demurrer
must be sustained, and as the petition suffers from a defect not
curable by amendment, an order will be entered dismissing the petition,
with costs. So ordered.

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