ATLAS CONSOLIDATED MINING AND DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, PETITIONER, VS. HON. FULGENCIO S. FACTORAN, JR., IN HIS CAPACITY AS DEPUTY EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, AND ASTERIO BUQUERON, RESP…

This is a petition for review on certiorari, seeking to
set aside the decision rendered by public respondent Deputy Executive Secretary
Fulgencio S. Factoran, Jr.,
by authority of the President, reinstating and confirming the decision dated
April 17, 1978 of the Director of Mines and Geo Sciences, and setting aside the
decision of the Minister of Natural Resources.

The undisputed facts of this case are as follows:

On February 9, 1972,
Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation registered the location
of its “Master VII Fr.” mining claim with the Mining Recorder of Toledo City. 
On September 10, 1973, private respondent Asterio
Buqueron registered the declarations of location of
his “St. Mary Fr.” and “St. Joseph Fr.” mining claims with the
same Mining Recorder.  On October
15, 1973, Atlas
regis­tered the declarations of location of its “Carmen I Fr.” to
“Carmen V Fr.” with the same Mining Recorder.

Buqueron’s “St. Mary Fr.” and “St.
Joseph Fr.” were surveyed and the survey plans thereof were duly approved
by the Director of Mines and Geo Sciences. 
Notice of Buqueron’s lease application was published in the February 22 and 28, 1977 issues of the
Evening Post.

During the said period of
publication, petitioner filed an adverse claim against private respondent’s
mining claims on the ground that they allegedly overlapped its own mining
claims.

After hearing, the
Director of Mines rendered a decision, dated April 17, 1978, the dispositive portion of which reads:

“VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF THE FOREGOING, respondent (Buqueron) is hereby given the preferential right to
possess, lease, explore, exploit and operate the areas covered by his “St.
Mary Fr.” and “St. Joseph Fr.” mining claims, except the area
covered thereby which is in con­flict with adverse claimant’s (Atlas)
“Master VII Fr.” Adverse claimant (Atlas) on the other hand, is given
the preferential right to possess, lease, explore, exploit and operate the area
covered by its “Master VII Fr.” claim.”

Atlas appealed to the
Minister of Natural Resources who rendered a decision dated November
10, 1978, the dispo­sitive portion of which reads as follows:

“PREMISES CONSIDERED, the decision of the Director of Mines
dated April 17, 1978,
should be, as hereby it is, set aside. 
In lieu thereof, it is hereby declared that the “St. Mary Fr.”
and “St. Joseph Fr.” mining claims of Asterio
Buqueron are null and void, that the “Carmen I
Fr.” to “Carmen V
Fr.” mining claims, of Atlas Consoli­dated Mining and Development Corpora­tion
are valid, and that it be given the preferential
right to possess, explore,
exploit, lease and operate the
areas covered thereby.”

(Decision, Office of the President; Rollo, pp. 52-57; Decision
of the Minis­ter of Natural Resources, Rollo,
pp. 47-51; Comment of Public Respondent,
Rollo, pp. 88-90; Decision, Director of Mines, Rollo, pp. 157-160).

As aforestated, on further appeal, the
Deputy Executive Secretary, Office of the President, reversed the decision of
the Minister of Natural Resources and reinstated the deci­sion of the Director
of Mines and Geo Sciences.

Hence,
this petition.

Briefly stated,
petitioner’s assignment of errors may be combined into the following issues:

(1)   
Whether or not private respondent’s appeal to
the Office of the President was time-barred;

(2)   
Whether or not there was a valid location and
discovery of the disputed mining claims.

The
Second Division of this Court without giving due course to the petition, required respondents to comment in the
resolution of October 6, 1986 (Rollo, p. 76).  Both
private respondent and public respondent filed their respective comments on November 17, 1986 (Rollo, pp. 81-86; pp.
88-95).

On December
8, 1986 (Rollo, p. 104)
this Court required the respondents to file a rejoinder to the consolidated
reply filed by counsel for petitioner dated November 4, 1986 (Rollo, pp. 97-102).  Said rejoinder was filed
on February 6, 1987 (Rollo, pp. 108-111), by the Solicitor
General for public respondent, after which petitioner filed a sur-rejoinder thereto on March 13, 1987 (Rollo, pp.
113-116).  Thereafter the Court in the
resolution of March 30, 1987 gave due course to the petition
and required both parties to file their respective memoranda.

Counsel for public respondent filed a Manifestation/Motion praying to be allowed to adopt
its comment dated November 2, 1986 and Rejoinder dated February
4, 1987 as the
memorandum for public respondent. 
Petitioner filed its memo­randum on May 25, 1987 (Rollo, p. 136).

The petition is devoid of
merit.

I.

It is not disputed that
private respondent received a copy of the decision of the Minister of Natural
Resources dated November 10, 1978 on November 27, 1978 and that under Section 50 of Presidential
Decree No. 463, the decision of the Minister is appealable to the Office of the President within five (5) days from receipt thereof.  In the case at bar, the 5-day period expired on December
2, 1978, a Saturday,
private respondent filed his appeal on December 4, 1978, a Monday.

Petitioner contends that the appeal was filed out of time and therefore, the Office of the President
did not acquire jurisdiction over the case and should have dismissed the same
outright (Rollo, pp. 20-21).

This contention is
untenable.

Petitioner and private
respondent are in accord on the fact that at the time of the filing of the
questioned appeal, Saturday was observed as a legal holiday in the Office of
the President pursuant to Section 29 of the Revised Administrative Code as
amended.

The same law provides:

“Section 31.  Pretermission of holiday. – Where
the day, or the last day, for doing any act required or permitted by law falls
on a holiday, the act may be done on the next succeeding business day.”

Apart from the fact that
the law is clear and needs no interpretation, this Court in accordance
therewith has invariably held that in case the last day for doing an act is a
legal holiday, it does not have the effect of making the preceding day, the
last day for doing the same; the act may be done on the next succeeding
business day (Gonzaga v. Ce
David, 110 Phil. 463-464 [1960]; Calano v. Cruz, 91
Phil. 247 [1952]; Austria, et al. v. The Solicitor General, et al., 71 Phil. 288 [1941]).

Coming back to the case
at bar, as the next working day after December 2, 1978 was December 4, 1978 – a Monday, it is evident that private
respondent’s appeal was filed on time.

II.

It is apparent that the
second issue as to whether or not there was a valid location and discovery of
the disputed mining claims is a question of fact best left to the determina­tion
of the administrative bodies charged with the implement­ation of the law they
are entrusted to enforce.  As uniformly
held by the Court, it is sufficient that administrative find­ings of fact are
supported by evidence, or negatively stated, it is sufficient that findings of
fact are not shown to be unsupported by evidence.  Substantial evidence is all that is needed to
support an administrative finding of fact, and substantial evidence is
“such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” (Ang Tibay v.
Court of Industrial Relations, 69 Phil.
635, 642; Police Commission v. Lood, 127 SCRA
762 [1984]).

In the case at bar, the
record amply shows that the Director of Mines’ decision was supported by substantial
evi­dence.

Petitioner claimed that
it is a registered surface land owner and locator of six (6) lode claims duly registered with the Office of the Mining Recorder as above stated and that in
derogation of its established possessory rights,
private res­pondent Asterio Buqueron,
without its written permission, caused the “table” location and
survey and applied for the lease of his alleged mining claims known as “St. Mary Fr.” and “St. Joseph Fr.” lode claims.

In his answer, private respondent denied the material allegations of the adverse claim and
by way of affirmative defense alleged
that all of petitioner’s claims including a portion of Master VII Fr.
are null and void for having been located in areas which were closed to mining location in open and
gross violation of paragraph 1 (d) of Section 28 and of Section 60 of the
Mining Act as amended.

The main thrust of
petitioner’s claim is that all of the mining claims of both petitioner and
private respondent are located inside the premises or properties of the former,
so that it is hardly possible for private respondent to have conducted the
requisite location and survey without having been seen or noticed by petitioner and its personnel.

The Director of Mines
established that there is in fact an overlapping of mining
claims of petitioner and private res­pondent and that as a matter of record petitioner’s mining claims were registered
subsequent to those of private res­pondent with the exception
of Master VII Fr. which was regis­tered on February 9, 1972 or prior to the
registration of the mining claims of private respondent.

In ruling as to who,
between the parties shall be given preferential right to lease the area in
question, the Director of Mines’ findings are as follows:

“Adverse claimant in its attempt to impugn the validity of the
mining claims of respondent alleged that said mining claims were the result of
table locations and survey and in support thereof submitted the sworn
statements of its Chief Geologist and Chief Security.

On the other hand, respondent asserted that he, through his
authorized represent­ative actually and validly performed all the acts of
discovery and location required by law
and the field survey of his mining claims was actually conducted by
Geodetic Engineer Salvador Aligaen from December 16 to 18, 1974.  In support of this assertion, respondent
submitted in evidence affidavit of the authorized agent (Annex “D” of the
answer) and another affidavit of Geodetic Engineer Salvador Aligaen
(Annex “F” of the answer). 
Respondent also submitted in evidence Bureau of Forestry map and Bureau
of Coast and Geodetic Survey map of the total area (Exhs.
“9” to “10”) which embraces the area in
question.  These maps tend to
prove that the Atlas main gate is not the only point of ingress and egress such
that one can enter the area in quest­ion for the purpose of mining location and
survey without being noticed by any of the personnel of Atlas.

After a careful appraisal of the evi­dence submitted, and cognizant
as we are of the provisions of Presidential Decree No. 99-A, we are of the view
that adverse claimant failed to adduce sufficient evi­dence to nullify the prior claims of res­pondent.  Stated differently, the evi­dence submitted
are not sufficient to destroy the prima facie character of the sworn
declarations of location of respondent’s mining claims which were duly
registered on the date herein before stated. 
Thus “A location notice certificate or statement when recorded is prima facie evidence of all the facts the statute requires it to
contain and which were sufficiently set forth” (40 C.J. pp. 811-812) and constitute notice to all persons and to the whole world of
the contents of the same (Sec. 56 of the Mining Act, as amended).

It is, therefore, pertinent to quote hereunder Sections 28(d) and 60
of the Mining Act, as amended, as well as Section 1 of Presidential Decree No.
99-A:

“SEC. 28 – No
Prospecting shall be Allowed:

(d)
– In lands which have been located for mining leases by other prospectors under
the provisions of this Act.”

“SEC. 60. – No valid mining claim or any part thereof, may be
located by others until the original locator or his successors in interest
abandons the claim or forfeits his rights on the same under the provisions of
this Act.”

“SEC. 1 – Whenever
there is any conflict between claim owners over any mining claims
whether mineral or non?mineral, the locator of the claim who first
registered his claim with the proper mining registrar, notwithstanding any defect in form or techni­cality,
shall have the exclusive right to possess, exploit, explore, develop and
operate such mining claims.  x x x “

In the light of the aforequoted pro­visions
of law applicable on the matter, and in view of our findings, earlier dis­cussed,
the subsequent mining claims of adverse claimant insofar as they conflict the
prior claims of respondent are hereby declared null and void.

On the other hand, it is also our view that respondent failed to
adduce sufficient evidence to prove that the prior claim of adverse claimant
(Master VII Fr.) is null and void. 
Considering that this mining claim is prior in point of location and
registration, it follows that this claim will have to prevail over that of
respond­ent.  For the same reason,
therefore, that the subsequent claims of adverse claimant were declared null
and void insofar as they conflict with the prior claims of respondent, the
mining claims of respondent insofar as they conflict with “Master VII
Fr.” claim of adverse
claimant are likewise declared null and void.” (Decision,
Director of Mines; Rollo, pp. 157-160).

As earlier stated the
above findings, although reversed by the Minister of Natural Resources, were
affirmed by the Office of the President.

However, petitioner would
have this Court look into the said findings because of the open divergence of
views and findings by the adjudicating authorities in this mining conflict
involving highly contentious issues which warrant appellate review (Rollo, p. 18).

This
Court has repeatedly ruled that
judicial review of the decision of an administrative official is of course
subject to certain guideposts laid down in many decided cases.  Thus, for instance, findings of fact in such decision
should not be disturbed if supported by substantial evidence, but review is
justified when there has been a denial of due process, or mistake of law or
fraud, collusion or arbitrary action in the administrative proceeding (L-21588
– Atlas Development and Acceptance Corp. v. Gozon,
etc. et al., 64 O.G. 11511 [1967]), where the procedure which led to factual findings is irregular; when palpable errors are committed; or
when a grave abuse of discretion, arbitrariness, or capriciousness is mani­fest
(Ateneo de Manila University v. CA, 145 SCRA 100-101
[1986]; International Hardwood and Veneer Co., of the Philip­pines v. Leogardo, 117 SCRA 967; Baguio
Country Club Corpora­tion v. National Labor Relations Commission, 118 SCRA 557;
Sichangco v. Commissioner of Immigration, 94 SCRA 61;
and Eusebio v. Sociedad Agricola de Balarin, 16 SCRA
569).

A careful study of the
records shows that none of the above circumstances is present in the case at
bar, which would justify the overturning of the findings of fact of the
Director of Mines which were
affirmed by the Office of the President. 
On the contrary, in accordance with the prevailing principle that
“in reviewing administrative decisions, the reviewing Court cannot
reexamine the sufficiency of the evidence as if originally instituted therein,
and receive additional evidence, that was not submitted to the administrative
agency concerned”, the findings of fact in this case must be
respected.  As ruled by the Court, they
will not be disturbed so long as they are supported by substantial evidence,
even if not overwhelming or preponderant (Police Commission v. Lood, supra).

PREMISES CONSIDERED, this petition is hereby DENIED, and the
assailed decision of the Office of the President, is hereby AFFIRMED.

SO ORDERED.

Teehankee, C.J., Narvasa,
and Cruz, JJ., concur.

Gancayco, J., on leave.