SECOND DIVISION
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SPS. NARCISO BARNACHEA and JULITA BARNACHEA (now heirs of deceased Julita Barnachea), Petitioners, - versus - HON. COURT OF APPEALS, HON. OSCAR C. HERRERA, JR., Presiding Judge, RTC Branch 20, Malolos, Bulacan, HON., HORACIO T. VIOLA, Presiding Judge, MTC Pulilan, Bulacan, and SPS. AVELINO and PRISCILLA IGNACIO, Respondents. |
G.R. No. 150025 Present: QUISUMBING, J., Chairperson, carpio MORALES, TINGA, VELASCO, JR., and BRION, JJ. Promulgated:
July 23, 2008 |
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D E C I
S I O N |
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BRION, J.: |
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Before
us is the Petition for Review by Certiorari filed by the spouses Narciso
and Julita Barnachea[1] (petitioners)
against the spouses Avelino and Priscilla Ignacio (respondents), rooted in the ejectment complaint the respondents filed against the
petitioners before the Municipal Trial Court (MTC) of Pulilan, Bulacan.
The petition prays that we nullify the Decision[2] of the Court of Appeals (CA) and its Resolution[3] denying the motion for reconsideration, and
that we suspend the ejectment proceedings in light of a pending action for
quieting of title involving the disputed property.
BACKGROUND FACTS
The
respondents filed their complaint for ejectment against the petitioners before the
MTC on
The
complaint was dismissed on
To avert the implementation of the
writ of execution, the petitioners filed a Notice of Appeal. The MTC issued a
subpoena dated
On
On
RTC
Branch 20 denied on
THE CA’S DECISION
The CA denied the petition and the petitioners' subsequent motion for reconsideration, essentially on the grounds that (1) the issue in an ejectment suit is limited to the physical possession of real property and is separate and distinct from the issue of ownership and possession de jure that either party may set forth in his or her pleading; (2) the pendency of an action for reconveyance of title over the same property or for annulment of deed of sale does not divest the MTC of its jurisdiction to try the forcible entry or unlawful detainer case before it, and that ejectment actions generally cannot be suspended pending the resolution of a case for quieting of title between the same parties over the same subject property; and (3) the case does not fall under the exception provided by the case of Amagan v. Marayag[4], where the Court allowed the suspension of ejectment proceedings because of strong reasons of equity applicable to the case – the demolition of the petitioner’s house unless the proceedings would be suspended. The CA ruled that the petitioners’ reliance on Amagan was inappropriate because the said case only applies to unlawful detainer actions while the petitioners’ ejectment suit is an action for forcible entry. To the CA, the initial tolerance on the part of the private respondents did not convert the nature of their ejectment suit from forcible entry into unlawful detainer, following the reasoning this Court applied in Munoz v. Court of Appeals.[5]
ASSIGMENT OF ERRORS
The petitioners impute the following error to the CA:
[T]he Honorable Court of Appeals erred when it ruled that the said ejectment proceeding was not a suit for illegal detainer but one of forcible entry, thus, denied application to the exceptional rule on suspension of ejectment proceedings, at any stage thereof, until the action on ownership is finally settled.[6]
From this general
assignment of error, the petitioners submitted in their memorandum the
following specific issues for our resolution:
1) whether or not the ejectment case filed by the respondents against
petitioners with the MTC of Pulilan is for unlawful detainer or for forcible
entry;
2)
whether the MTC of Pulilan had validly acquired and exercised jurisdiction over
the ejectment case considering that the complaint was filed beyond one year
from the demand to vacate the subject premises; and
3) whether or not the ejectment proceedings should be suspended at any stage until the action on ownership of the disputed portion of the subject property is finally settled.
OUR RULING
We find the petition without merit.
1.
Nature of the
Action before the MTC.
The best indicator of what the plaintiff in an ejectment case intends with respect to the nature of his or her complaint can be found in the complaint itself. In this case, the complaint states:[7]
“That plaintiffs are the registered owners in fee simple of several residential lots identified as lots 16 and 17 covered by Certificate of Title Nos. 86821 and 86822 issued in the name of the spouses by the Register of Deeds of Bulacan, with a total aggregate area of 254 square meters situated at Cutcut, Pulilan, Bulacan. Copy of the said titles are hereto attached and marked as Annex “A” and “A-1”
“That
in a portion of the lots 16 and 17, a portion of the house of the defendants
was erected and built thus usurping the said portion and this was made known to
the defendants when the plaintiffs caused the relocation of the subject lots,
however, considering that the latter were not yet in need of that portion, they
allowed the former to stay on the portion by tolerance;
“That last July 1998, when the plaintiffs were in the process of fencing the boundary of their lots, to their surprise, they were not allowed by the defendants to extend the fence up to the portions they illegally occupied;
“That despite the advice given to them by several Geodetic Engineers commissioned by both the plaintiffs and the herein defendants, for them to give way and allow the plaintiffs to fence their lot, same proved futile as they stubbornly refused to surrender possession of the subject portion;
The actions for forcible entry and
unlawful detainer are similar because they are both summary actions where the
issue is purely physical possession.[8] Other than these commonalities, however,
they possess dissimilarities that are clear, distinct, and well established in
law.[9]
In forcible entry, (1) the plaintiff
must prove that he was in prior physical possession of the property until he
was deprived of possession by the defendant; (2) the defendant secures possession of the
disputed property from the plaintiff by means of force, intimidation, threat,
strategy or stealth; hence, his possession is unlawful from the beginning; (3)
the law does not require a previous demand by the plaintiff for the defendant
to vacate the premises; and (4) the action can be brought only within one-year
from the date the defendant actually and illegally entered the property.[10]
In
marked contrast, unlawful detainer is attended by the following features: (1)
prior possession of the property by the plaintiff is not necessary; (2)
possession of the property by the defendant at the start is legal but the possession
becomes illegal by reason of the termination of his right to possession based
on his or her contract or other arrangement with the plaintiff; (3) the
plaintiff is required by law to make a demand as a jurisdictional requirement;
and (4) the one-year period to bring the complaint is counted from the date of
the plaintiff’s last demand on the defendant.[11]
Under
these standards, we do not hesitate to declare the Court of Appeals in error
when it held that the present case involves forcible entry rather than unlawful
detainer. A plain reading of the
complaint shows the respondents’ positions that the petitioners were in prior
possession of the disputed property; that the respondents allowed them to
occupy the disputed property by tolerance; that the respondents eventually made
a demand that the petitioners vacate the property (on August 26, 1998, which
demand the petitioners received on August 31, 1998); and that the petitioners
refused to vacate the property in light of the defenses they presented. Separately
from the complaint, the respondents characterized the action they filed against
the petitioners in the MTC as an unlawful detainer when they stated in their
memorandum that “as
alleged in the complaint, what was filed by the respondents [was] an ejectment
suit for unlawful detainer.”[12]
A
critical point for us in arriving at our conclusion is the complete absence of
any allegation of force, intimidation, strategy or stealth in the complaint
with respect to the petitioners’ possession of the respondents’ property. While admittedly no express contract existed
between the parties regarding the petitioners’ possession, the absence does not
signify an illegality in the entry nor an entry by force, intimidation, strategy
or stealth that would characterize the entry as forcible. It has been held that
a person who occupies land of another at the latter’s tolerance or permission,
without any contract between them, is necessarily bound by an implied promise
that he will vacate upon demand, failing which a summary action for ejectment
is the proper remedy. The status of the
defendant is analogous to that of a lessee or tenant whose terms has expired
but whose occupancy continues by tolerance of the owner.[13]
To be sure, we are aware of the Munoz v. Court of Appeals[14] ruling that the CA relied upon to reach the conclusion that the present case involves forcible entry, not unlawful detainer. What the CA apparently misread in Munoz was the allegation of stealth in the complaint; anchored on this finding, the Court concluded that the defendant’s possession was illegal from the beginning so that there could be no possession by tolerance. The allegation of stealth, of course, is not present in the present case. On the contrary, tolerance was alleged in the ejectment complaint itself. Thus, there is no reason for the Munoz ruling to apply to the present case; there is no basis nor occasion to conclude that the respondents filed a forcible entry case.
2.
The Jurisdictional Issue –
Was the Ejectment Complaint
Seasonably Filed?
We
point out at the outset that what the petitioners directly appealed to this
Court is the appellate court’s affirmation of the RTC’s refusal to suspend the
ejectment proceedings based on the quieting of title case the petitioners
cited. Hence, we are not reviewing the merits of the main ejectment case,
particularly the question of the MTC’s jurisdiction, as these aspects of the
case were not appealed to us. If we touch
the jurisdictional aspect of the case at all, it is only for purposes of fully
responding to the parties’ arguments.
The petitioners’ jurisdictional argument cannot succeed as the respondents’ ejectment complaint was filed within the one-year period for bringing an action for unlawful detainer or forcible entry that Section 1, Rule 70 of the Rules of Court requires. Section 1 specifically states:
Section 1. Who may institute proceedings, and when.
Subject to the provisions of the next succeeding section, a person deprived of the possession of any land or building by force, intimidation, threat, strategy, or stealth, or a lessor, vendor, vendee, or other person against whom the possession of any land or building is unlawfully withheld after the expiration or termination of the right to hold possession, by virtue of any contract, express or implied, or the legal representatives or assigns of any such lessor, vendor, vendee, or other person, may, at any time within one (1) year after such unlawful deprivation or withholding of possession, bring an action in the proper Municipal Trial Court against the person or persons unlawfully withholding or depriving of possession, or any person or persons claiming under them, for the restitution of such possession, together with damages and costs.
On
the basis of this provision, the petitioners argue that the respondents’ cause
of action – whether for forcible entry or for unlawful detainer – had
prescribed when the ejectment complaint was filed on
The one-year period within which to
commence an ejectment proceeding is a prescriptive period as well as a
jurisdictional requirement. Hence,
Article 1155 of the Civil Code on the manner of reckoning the prescriptive
period must necessarily come into play.
Under this Article, the filing of a complaint in court interrupts the
running of prescription of actions. As an action for unlawful detainer, the
one-year prescription period started running after
3. Suspension of the Ejectment
Proceedings until Resolution
of the Ownership Issue.
The issue in an unlawful detainer case is limited to physical possession. When a claim of ownership is used as a basis for de facto possession or to assert a better possessory right, the court hearing the case may provisionally rule on the issue of ownership. As a rule, however, a pending civil action involving ownership of the same property does not justify the suspension of the ejectment proceedings. Only in rare cases has this Court allowed a suspension of the ejectment proceedings and one of these is in the case of Amagan v. Marayag[16] that the petitioners cite. To quote from Amagan –
[i]ndisputably, the execution of the MCTC Decision would have resulted in the demolition of the house subject of the ejectment suit; thus, by parity of reasoning, considerations of equity require suspension of the ejectment proceedings. xxx [L]ike Vda. de Legaspi, the respondent’s suit is one of unlawful detainer and not of forcible entry, and most certainly, the ejectment of petitioners would mean a demolition of their house, a matter that is likely to create “confusion, disturbance, inconvenience and expenses” mentioned in the said exceptional case.
Necessarily, the affirmance of the MCTC Decision would cause the respondent to go through the whole gamut of enforcing it by physically removing the petitioners from the premises they claim to have been occupying since 1937. (Respondent is claiming ownership only of the land, not of the house) Needlessly, the litigants as well as the courts will be wasting much time and effort by proceeding at a stage wherein the outcome is at best temporary, but the result of enforcement is permanent, unjust and probably irreparable.[17]
However,
we do not find these same circumstances present in this case for the reasons we
shall discuss in detail below.
First. In Amagan, the
party refusing to vacate the disputed premises (or the deforciant in the action for unlawful detainer) was the same party seeking to
quiet his title. In the present case, the petitioners are not parties to the
civil action (for quieting of title) whose result they seek to await; the
plaintiff in the quieting of title case is Leticia, the petitioner Julita’s
sister. No proof whatsoever was offered to show that petitioner Julita is
asserting her own title to the property; there is only the allegation that
Leticia was appointed as the representative of Julita and the other heirs of
Isidro in their various recourses at law to vindicate their landowners’ rights.[18] The
respondents in fact actively disputed petitioner Julita’s identification with
the quieting of title case in their Comment since Leticia claimed to be the
sole owner of TCT No. T-188-EP in her action to quiet title. The respondents also pointed to the document
entitled “Kasulatan
ng Pagmamana ng Lupa sa Labas ng Hukuman na May Pagtalikod sa Bahagi” executed on
Second. In Amagan, the MCTC decision involved the demolition of the petitioners’ house – a result that this Court found to be “permanent, unjust and probably irreparable”; in the present case, only a portion of the petitioners’ house is apparently affected as the petitioners occupy the lot adjoining the disputed property. Significantly, the height, width and breadth of the portion of the house that would be affected by the execution of the RTC Branch 20 decision does not appear anywhere in the records, thus, unavoidably inviting suspicion that the potential damage to the petitioners is not substantial. More important than the fact of omission is its implication; the omission constitutes a missing link in the chain of equitable reasons for suspension that the petitioners wish to establish. Thus, the equitable consideration that drove us to rule as we did in Amagan does not obtain in the present case.
In the absence of a concrete showing of compelling equitable reasons at least comparable and under circumstances analogous to Amagan, we cannot override the established rule that a pending civil action for ownership shall not ipso facto suspend an ejectment proceeding. Additionally, to allow a suspension on the basis of the reasons the petitioners presented in this case would create the dangerous precedent of allowing an ejectment suit to be suspended by an action filed in another court by parties who are not involved or affected by the ejectment suit.
WHEREFORE, premises considered, we hereby DISMISS the petition for lack of merit. Costs against the petitioners.
SO ORDERED.
ARTURO D. BRION
Associate Justice
WE CONCUR:
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LEONARDO A. QUISUMBING Associate Justice Chairperson |
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CONCHITA CARPIO MORALES Associate Justice |
DANTE O. TINGA Associate Justice |
PRESBITERO J. VELASCO, JR.
Associate Justice
ATTESTATION
I attest that the conclusions in the above Decision had been reached in consultation before the case was assigned to the writer of the opinion of the Court’s Division.
LEONARDO A. QUISUMBING
Associate Justice
Chairperson
CERTIFICATION
Pursuant
to Section 13, Article VIII of the Constitution and the Division Chairperson’s
Attestation, it is hereby certified that the conclusions in the above Decision
were reached in consultation before the case was assigned to the writer of the
opinion of the Court’s Division.
REYNATO S. PUNO
Chief Justice
[1] Per the Court’s Resolution dated July 30,
2003, the petitioner Julita Barnachea’s death on June 14, 2003 was noted and
the substitution of her heirs as parties-in-interest was granted; rollo, p. 97.
[2] Penned by Associate Justice Romeo A. Brawner (deceased), with Associate Justice Remedios A. Salazar-Fernando and Associate Justice Rebecca De Guia-Salvador, concurring; dated May 30, 2001; rollo, pp. 33-40.
[3] Dated
[4] G.R. No. 138377,
[5] G.R. No. 102693,
[6] Rollo,
p.16.
[7]
[8] Go
v. Court of Appeals G.R. No. 142276,
[9] The actions for forcible entry and unlawful detainer are distinct actions defined by Rule 70, Sec. 1 of the Rules of Court cited in the later portion of this Decision.
[10] Dela
Cruz v. CA, G.R. No. 139442,
[11] See
Munoz v. Court of Appeals, supra note 5. See also Rivera v. Rivera, 405 SCRA 466 and Panganiban v. Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, 395 SCRA 624.
[12] Rollo,
p. 124.
[13] See Vda. De Cachuela v. Francisco, No. L-31985, June 25, 1980, 98 SCRA
172, 174, citing Calubayan v. Pascual,
21 SCRA 146.
[14] Supra note 5.
[15] Development
Bank of the
[16] Supra note
4.
[17]
[18] See
rollo, pp. 15-16, 65
[19]
[20]