Republic of the
Supreme Court
SECOND DIVISION
|
VALERIANO B. CANO, Petitioner, - versus - SPOUSES VICENTE and
SUSAN JUMAWAN, Respondents. |
|
G.R. No. 153860 Present: PUNO, J., Chairperson, SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ, AZCUNA, and GARCIA, JJ. Promulgated: February 6, 2006 |
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D E C I S I O N
GARCIA, J.:
By this petition for review on
certiorari under Rule 65 of the Rules of Court, petitioner Valeriano B. Cano
seeks the reversal and setting aside of the following issuances of the Court of
Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R. SP No. 64308,
to wit:
1. Decision[1] dated January 23, 2002, reversing that of the Regional Trial Court of Davao City, Branch 10, which, in turn, set aside, for want of jurisdiction, an earlier “Judgment” of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC), Davao City, in an unlawful detainer case thereat commenced by the herein respondents against petitioner; and
2.
Resolution[2]
dated
Stripped of unessentials,
the facts are:
Herein
respondents, the spouses Vicente Jumawan and Susan Jumawan, are the owners of a
parcel of agricultural land with an area of about 24,025 square meters at
Barangay Malagos, Baguio
District,
On
1. No rental shall be paid by petitioner for his occupancy of said portion of respondents’ landholding; and
2.
Upon the expiration of the agreed period of two (2)
years, petitioner “shall voluntarily remove” his small house/shanty thereon,
unless an extension is granted him by the respondents.
Following the
expiration of the aforementioned “Agreement,” respondents demanded the
petitioner to vacate the area occupied by him and to pay a rent of not less
than P300.00 a month until he shall have vacated the same. Petitioner refused. Hence, after conciliation
proceedings before the local barangay
lupon proved futile, respondents
filed against petitioner a complaint[4]
for unlawful detainer before the Municipal Circuit Trial Court (MCTC) of
In his answer,[5]
petitioner, while qualifiedly admitting the existence and execution of his
2-year agreement with the respondents, alleged that “ he has long been an
agricultural tenant” of the latter, adding that the ejectment suit was merely
resorted to by respondents as leverage after
he had filed an agrarian case against them before the Barangay Agrarian
Reform Council (BARC) which elevated said case to the Provincial Agrarian
Reform Office (PARO) for adjudication by the Department of Agrarian Reform
Adjudication Board (DARAB). He thus interposed in his answer the specific and
affirmative defense of lack of jurisdiction on the part of the MCTC, contending
that the suit before it was an “agrarian dispute” properly cognizable by the
DARAB.
After the parties
had filed their respective position papers, the MCTC came out with a “Judgment”[6] on
“WHEREFORE, judgment is hereby rendered IN FAVOR of the [respondents] and against the [petitioner], as follows:
a) Ordering [petitioner] and any person in his behalf, to vacate subject premises and yield possession thereof to [respondents];
b)
Directing [petitioner] to pay the sum of P300.00
per month from
c)
Sentencing [petitioner] to pay P10,000.00 as
attorney’s fees and to pay the cost.
SO ORDERED. (Words in brackets ours)
Therefrom,
petitioner went to the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of
WHEREFORE, the JUDGMENT rendered by the Court a quo is reversed and this case is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Consequently, the MOTION FOR EXECUTION PENDING APPEAL is denied.
SO ORDERED.
With their motion
for reconsideration having been denied by the RTC in its Order of March 2,
2001,[8]
respondents went to the CA on a petition for review, thereat docketed as CA-G.R. SP No. 64308.
As stated at the
outset hereof, the CA, in a decision dated
WHEREFORE,
the petition is GRANTED. Accordingly, the questioned decision dated December
29, 2000 and the Order dated March 2, 2001 of the Regional Trial Court, Branch
10, of Davao City are hereby REVERSED and SET ASIDE. Consequently, the Decision
[“Judgment”] dated
SO
ORDERED. (Word in bracket ours)
With the CA’s
denial of his motion for reconsideration in its Resolution of
WHETHER OR NOT THE INSTANT CASE WHICH CLEARLY INVOLVES AGRARIAN REFORM MATTERS FALLS WITHIN THE JURISDICTION OF THE MUNICIPAL TRIAL COURT.
Actually, the
issue thus formulated raises two distinct questions, namely: (1) whether the
instant case involves, in the first place, agrarian reform matters; and (2)
whether agrarian reform matters fall within the jurisdiction of municipal trial
courts.
We DISMISS.
To begin with, we
note from the records that respondents’ complaint for unlawful detainer was
filed with the MCTC on
On the other hand,
as borne by the annexes to petitioner’s Position Paper in the MCTC,
particularly Annex “E”[9]
thereof, he lodged a complaint for Harassment
With Design to Eject with the BARC
only on September 21, 1999, which
the BARC denominated as “agrarian
dispute,” and referred it to the Acting Municipal Agrarian Reform Officer, who
conducted an Investigation Report[10] thereon.
In turn, the Municipal Agrarian Reform Officer endorsed the case to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)
Provincial Reform Officer,
It can thus be
seen that contrary to petitioner’s pretense, his complaint for Harassment With Design to Eject initiated before the BARC on September 21, 1999 and which evidently
is the so-called “agrarian reform matters” referred to by him, came only after respondents’ complaint for
unlawful detainer before the MCTC on September
20, 1999. This lends credence to respondents’ claim that petitioner
resorted to the DAR in order to pre-empt the civil action for ejectment earlier
filed against him.
In any event, and
more importantly, the basic rule is that the material averments in the
complaint determine the jurisdiction of a court. And jurisprudence dictates
that a court does not lose its jurisdiction over an ejectment suit by the simple expedient of a party raising as a
defense therein the alleged existence of a tenancy relationship between the parties.[11] The court continues to have the authority to
hear and evaluate the evidence, precisely to determine whether or not it has
jurisdiction, and, if, after hearing, tenancy is shown to exist, it shall
dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.[12]
Here, the
allegations in respondents’ complaint before the MCTC clearly make out a case
for unlawful detainer. Petitioner was allowed to construct his house/shanty on
a portion of respondents’ property without paying rental therefor
but merely for “humanitarian consideration,” pursuant to a notarized agreement
which explicitly imposes on the petitioner the obligation to remove his
construction thereon and vacate the premises upon the expiration of said
agreement. The agreement had undoubtedly expired but despite respondents’
demand to vacate, petitioner refused. To
the MCTC, “[T]he, ‘Agreement’ which [petitioner] admitted having signed …
clearly negates the claim of [petitioner] of a tenancy relationship between him
and the [respondents].”
For sure, the very
pieces of evidence submitted by the parties before the MCTC, consisting of
annexes to their respective position papers, indubitably belie petitioner’s
claim of being a tenant of respondents. For one, there is no less the sworn
affidavit[13]
in the local dialect of his very own mother, Albina Cano, saying that her son
is not a tenant of respondents but of one Rodolfo Evangelista, a declaration
under oath which finds support in the equally sworn affidavits of Rodolfo
Evangelista himself;[14]
Nicasio Layan[15]
and Maximo Roloos.[16]
If ever, the only
piece of evidence adduced by petitioner to buttress his self-serving claim of
tenancy relationship is the sworn affidavit of Felisa Tan,[17]
proprietor of Golden Grains Harvest Trading, relevantly reading, as follows:
That
I know and is (sic) known to VALERIANO CANO, who have (sic) been selling to us
since 1992 to `995 a total of ONE HUNDRED TWENTY (120) CAVANS of palay, allegedly the share of SUSAN A.
JUMAWAN, the lessor of the agricultural land from which the palay sold to us
was harvested from.
That
consequently after every sale of VALERIANO S. CANO, we issued to him receipts
of his palay sale.
That I am executing this affidavit to attest to
the truth of the foregoing facts to declare that VALERIANO V. CANO have sold to
us the above cited cavans of rice for whatever legal purposes this may serve from
hereof (sic). (Emphasis supplied)
Clear it is from
the above, however, affiant Tan has no personal knowledge that the 120 cavans
of palay sold to her by petitioner, allegedly the share of SUSAN A.
JUMAWAN, were in fact harvested from respondents’ land.
Besides, it must
be noted that the palay transaction referred to by Tan in her affidavit was
from 1992 to 1995, or long before petitioner constructed his house on
the eastern portion of respondents’ land sometime in 1997 pursuant to
the notarized “Agreement” earlier mentioned. No evidence was presented by
petitioner that he was still selling palay harvested from respondents’ land
after 1995. If indeed petitioner is respondents’
tenant and his tenancy required the construction of a house on the latter’s
land, then it should have been as early as 1992, or, at the very least, between
1992 and 1995 when he was selling palay to Tan that he should have erected his
house on a portion of respondents’ landholding.
Given the reality
that it was only after the execution of the “Agreement” in question that
petitioner put up his house on respondents’ property, the only clear and
logical conclusion is that he was not a tenant of the latter and that it was
merely out of “humanitarian
consideration” that he was allowed to stay thereat, but with the
obligation on his part to vacate the place and yield possession thereof to
respondents after the agreement shall have expired.
Case law teaches
that the essential requisites of an agricultural
tenancy relationship are: (1) the parties are the landowner and the tenant; (2)
the subject is agricultural land; (3) there is consent; (4) the purpose is
agricultural production; (5) there is personal cultivation; and (6) there is
sharing of harvests.[18]
All these requisites must concur for a tenancy relationship to exist. The
absence of one does not make an occupant
of a parcel of land, or a cultivator thereof, or a planter thereon, a de jure tenant. Unless a person establishes his status
as de jure tenant, he is not entitled
to security of tenure nor covered by the land reform program of the government
under existing tenancy laws.[19]
Simply put, the pieces
of evidence on record fail to yield the existence of the foregoing requisites
between the herein parties. Quite the contrary, the pleadings filed and their
annexes heavily preponderate on the absence of such relationship.
WHEREFORE, the instant petition is DISMISSED and the assailed decision and
resolution of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R.
SP No. 64308 are
AFFIRMED in toto.
Costs against
petitioner.
SO ORDERED.
CANCIO C. GARCIA
Associate Justice
WE CONCUR:
REYNATO S. PUNO
Associate Justice
Chairperson
|
ANGELINA SANDOVAL-GUTIERREZ Associate Justice |
RENATO C. CORONA Associate Justice |
ADOLFO S. AZCUNA
Associate Justice
A T T E S T A T I O N
I attest 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
Associate Justice
Chairperson, Second Division
C E R T I F I C A T I O N
Pursuant to Article VIII, Section 13 of
the Constitution, and the Division Chairman'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.
ARTEMIO V. PANGANIBAN
Chief Justice
[1] Penned by Associate Justice
Bienvenido C. Reyes with Associate Justices Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez (now a
member of this Court) and Roberto A. Barrios, concurring; Rollo, pp. 218-231.
[2] Rollo, pp. 246-247.
[3] Rollo, pp. 37-38.
[4] Rollo, pp. 33-36.
[5] Rollo, pp. 40-43.
[6] Rollo, pp. 79-85.
[7] Rollo, pp. 120-126.
[8] Rollo, pp. 154-155.
[9] Rollo, p. 75.
[10] Annex “F,” Petitioner’s Position Paper; Rollo, pp. 76-77.
[11] De
la Cruz, et al. vs. Hon. Crispin Bautista, et al., 186 SCRA 517, 525
(1990).
[12] Ignacio,
et al. vs. The Hon. CFI of Bulacan, et
al., 42 SCRA 89 (1971).
[13] Marked as Annex “C,” Rollo, p. 59.
[14] Rollo, p. 60.
[15] Rollo, p. 61.
[16] Rollo, p. 62.
[17] Rollo, p. 69.
[18] See Note #13, supra.
[19] Caballes
vs. DAR, et al., 168 SCRA 247
(1988).