ANIANO TORRES AND JOSEFINA TORRES, PETITIONERS, VS. THE HON. COURT OF APPEALS, HON. REGIONAL TRIAL COURT OF NEGROS ORIENTAL, BRANCH 34, AND ADELA B. FLORES, RESPONDENTS.

The petitioners failed in the Municipal Circuit Court of
Pamplona, Negros Oriental, the Regional Trial Court of Dumaguete City, and the
Court of Appeals. They are now before
this Court for a fourth opinion.

The question before us is whether or not the original contracts
of lease entered into between the petitioners and the private respondent have
been validly renewed.

These contracts related to ten parcels of land belonging to Adela
B. Flores, the herein private respondent, that she leased to the spouses Aniano
and Josefina Torres, for a specified term of four agricultural years commencing
from 1985 and at stipulated rentals payable in piculs of sugar.

It is not disputed that before the expiration of these contracts,
the parties agreed on their renewal under the original terms, subject to the
condition that the lessees would deliver to Flores the amount of P50,000.00 not
later than February 15, 1989. Flores
said she would need the money for her projected trip abroad.

Flores claims that the petitioners failed to comply with this
condition and that consequently she informed them on February 17, 1989,^[1]
that she was taking over her property upon the expiration of the
contracts. She reiterated this notice
one month later and advised them not to undertake any new cultivation on the
lands.^[2]
When her subsequent demands for the surrender of her property were disregarded,
she sued the petitioners for illegal detainer.

In their answer to the complaint, the petitioners submitted that
the contracts had been validly renewed because they had complied with the
above-mentioned condition. As
affirmative defense, they contended that the lease had been continued under the
rule of tacita reconduccion and that the complainant was estopped
from denying that she had granted them an option to renew the contracts.

After trial under the Rule on Summary Procedure, Judge Teopisto
L. Calumpang held that the contracts had not been validly renewed because the
Torreses had failed to deliver the amount of P50,000.00 in cash to Flores as
promised. The total amount raised by
the petitioners by February 15, 1989, was only P11,415.89.^[3] This
finding was affirmed on appeal to the Regional Trial Court of Dumaguete City by
Judge Rosendo B. Bandal, Jr., who added that such non-compliance had been
established by the admission of the petitioners themselves.^[4]

In their appeal to the respondent court, the petitioners argued
that (a) what was subject to the condition was the execution of the renewed
written contract of lease; (b) granting that the condition was to be applied to
the principal contract, this was complied with as evidenced by the subsequent
acts of plaintiff in withdrawing P50,000.00 worth of piculs of sugar; and (c)
the appellee was placed in estoppel and guilty of bad faith because of the
previously referred withdrawal.

Again they failed. On
January 25, 1990, in a perceptive decision penned by Justice Celso L. Magsino,
the Court of Appeals sustained the findings of the lower courts that the
contracts had not been validly renewed.^[5] The
petitioners’ motion for reconsideration was denied on February 19, 1990,^[6]
and they have now come to this Court as a last resort.

The present petition faults the Court of Appeals for not holding
that the contracts of lease had been impliedly renewed, that the lessor was
estopped from denying this, and that the contracts had been novated. The petitioners also complain that the
supplement to their motion for reconsideration had not been taken into account.

The petitioners must fail again.

We begin by reiterating the familiar rule that the findings of
fact of the lower courts are binding on this Court unless they come within the
specified exceptions, which are also well-known.^[7] None
of such exceptions has been established in the case at bar. We therefore accept that there was an oral
agreement between the parties to extend the original contracts of lease
provided that the petitioners could deliver to the private respondent the sum
of P50,000.00 in cash not later than February 15, 1989. This was a suspensive condition that was not
met.

It is clear from the documentary evidence submitted by both
parties that the two checks paid to Flores by the spouses Torres were in the
separate amounts of only P1,686.15 and P9,729.74. They were undisputably far short of the required payment of the
P50,000.00 rentals on the land by the petitioners as a condition for the
renewal of the lease. Hence, Flores as
lessor was not obliged to extend the contracts.

As correctly held by the Court of Appeals:

The evidence on record shows that when petitioner Josefina Torres
came to see private respondent sometime in December, 1988, she requested that
they renew their contract of lease which was to expire in crop year
1988-1989. Private respondent told her
that she may consider petitioner’s request if she could put up the amount of
P50,000.00 cash to be applied to the rental of the leased sugar lands on or before
February 15, 1989, which the respondent would need for her trip abroad,
otherwise, they were going to abide by the subsisting contract of lease. When February 15, 1989 came, and petitioner
Josefina Torres was not able to comply with the aforesaid condition, on
February 17, 1989, respondent wrote petitioner Josefina that she would take
over the cultivation of the subject lands. On February 20, 1989, private respondent caused her lawyer to write the
petitioners not to make any further cultivation of the subject lands. Under the foregoing factual backdrop, the
condition set up by private respondent that petitioner Josefina Torres produce
and give her cash in the amount of P50,000.00 on or before February 15, 1989 is
a suspensive condition for said respondent to consider the renewal, not
the actual renewal yet of the contract of lease. Definitely, what transpired between private respondent and
petitioner Josefina Torres, as found by the lower courts and which We find to
be correct, is not an option given to the petitioners to renew the lease
agreement. Given the fact that private
respondent served notice to the petitioners that she was terminating the
contract of lease as per their agreement, after the harvest of the canes from
each parcel of land during the crop year 1988-1989, there can arise no implied
renewal of lease (tacita reconduccion), but that the continued
possession and cultivation of the subject lands therefore by the petitioners
constitutes illegal detainer.

The petitioners’ argument that they had complied with the
condition because the private respondent had withdrawn from them quedans
with a money value of more than P50,000.00 is not acceptable. The value of the quedans withdrawn as of
February 15, 1989, amounted to only P11,415.89. Her acceptance of the two check vouchers representing the quedans
might indeed have estopped her from arguing that the payments should have been
in cash, especially so since she had encashed the checks without
objection. The obstinate fact, however,
is that the cash value of the checks was undeniably below the stipulated
P50,000.00 that was to be paid before the deadline.

The invocation of tacita reconduccion is
futile. The facts of this case as found
by the lower courts clearly show that there was no implied renewal but instead
an express termination of the contracts of lease. This is evident from the letters of Flores to the petitioners
advising them on February 17, 1989, that she would take over her property upon
the end of agricultural year 1989 and on March 8, 1989, that they should not
undertake any new cultivation of the leased lands and demanding again that they
vacate the same. This demand had
earlier been made by Flores’s counsel on February 20, 1989.^[8]

The Civil Code provides:

Art. 1670. If at the end of
the contract, the lessee should continue enjoying the thing leased for fifteen
days with the acquiescence of the lessor, and unless a notice to the contrary
by either party has previously been given, it is understood that there is an
implied new lease, not for the period of the original contract but for the time
established in Art. 1682 and 1687. The
other terms of the original contract shall be revived.

There was no acquiescence on the part of the lessor to the
petitioners’ continued stay in her property. On the contrary, she expressly informed them that she was not renewing
the lease and in fact later demanded that they vacate her property. The private respondent’s acceptance of the
rentals beyond the original term did not signify that she had agreed to the
implied renewal of the lease. The
simple reason is that the petitioners remained in possession of the subject
lands and, regardless of the outcome of their case, had to pay rentals to the
private respondent for the use of her property.

The issue of novation does not deserve consideration in this
petition as it was raised for the first time only when the case was already in
the Court of Appeals.

Finally, we must also reject the complaint that the petitioners
were denied due process because the respondent court did not take into account
the supplement to their motion for reconsideration. The presumption is that such supplement was considered but found
to be undeserving of further comment. Courts are not required to expressly dispose of every single point or
argument raised by litigants, even if off-tangent, repetitive or absurd. Courts must distinguish between the
substantial and the irrelevant or trivial as a practical measure for the proper
harnessing of their time.

WHEREFORE, the petition is DENIED, with costs against the petitioners. It is so ordered.

Padilla, Griño-Aquino, and
Bellosillo, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 128.

^[2]
Ibid., p. 129.

^[3]
Id., p. 46.

^[4]
id., pp. 50-54.

^[5]
id., pp. 18-25; concurred in by De Paño, Jr. and Sempio-Dy, JJ..

^[6]
id., pp. 28-29.

^[7]
Universal Motor Corporation v. Court of Appeals, 205 SCRA 448; Dichoso v.
Court of Appeals, 192 SCRA 169.

^[8]
id., p. 45.