G.R. Nos.
162335 & 162605 Severino M. Manotok
IV, et al. v. Heirs of
Homer L. Barque,
represented by Teresita Barque Hernandez
Promulgated:
August
24, 2010
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CONCURRING AND
DISSENTING OPINION
CARPIO MORALES, J.:
DENR
Memorandum Order No. 16-05 of October 27, 2005 (Order 16-05) is significant
in resolving the issue of validity of titles over friar lands. Its relevance
cannot be ignored.
Previous pronouncements state that all
lots in the Piedad Estate have been disposed of even before the Second World
War.[1] In the present case, three sets of claimants
over
The core issue, as defined by
the ponencia, is whether the absence of approval of the Secretary
of the Interior/Agriculture and Natural Resources (Department Secretary) in
petitioners’ Sale Certificate No. 1054 and Deed of Conveyance
No. 29204 issued in 1919 and 1932, respectively, warrants the annulment of
their title.[2]
It does, says the ponencia.
It does not, I submit.
There is no absence of approval to
speak of, since petitioners’ Deed of Conveyance is, pursuant to Order
16-05, deemed signed by the Department
Secretary, and there is no legal basis
for requiring another signature of the Department Secretary on the Sale
Certificate.
On the purportedly limited
applicability of Order 16-05 to instruments “on file with the records of the
DENR field offices,” the ponencia concedes that it merely mentions in
passing the appellate court’s observation that the Deed of Conveyance was
secured from the National Archives, and not from the DENR. Whether the source or remaining repository of
the document is material for the applicability of Order 16-05, the ponencia
does not clearly declare, as it briefly states:
The CA opined that the Manotoks cannot benefit from the above department issuance [-Order 16-05] because it makes reference only to those deeds of conveyance on file with the records of the DENR field offices. The Manotoks’ copy of the alleged Deed of Conveyance No. 29204 issued in 1932, was sourced from the National Archives. x x x[3] (underscoring supplied)
The ponencia
thereafter digresses to the effect of a deed of conveyance “unsigned” by the
Department Secretary. It does not uphold
the appellate court’s reasoning denying, on the basis of the source of
the document, the applicability of Order 16-05, since it (the ponencia), by the ponente’s admission, merely “underscored”[4] such
observation. It does not, however,
ascribe any legal consequence to it.
Simply put, the confusion stems from the immediately-quoted two barren
sentences of the ponencia.
An examination of Order 16-05 vis-à-vis the Friar Lands Act (Act No.
1120) enacted in 1904 is in order. Order
16-05 disposes:
WHEREFORE, for and in consideration of the above
premises, and in order to remove all clouds of doubt regarding the validity of
these instruments, it is hereby declared that all Deeds of Conveyance that
do not bear the signature of
the Secretary are deemed signed or otherwise ratified by this
Memorandum Order, provided, however, that full payment of the
purchase price of the land and compliance with all the other requirements
for the issuance of the Deed of Conveyance under Act No. 1120 have been
accomplished by the applicant[.] (emphasis, italics and underscoring supplied)
Contrary to the ponencia’s position, Order 16-05 does not contravene Act No.
1120. Order 16-05 did not dispense
with the requirement of the Department Secretary’s approval. It recognizes that the approval of the
Secretary is still required, the grant or ratification of which is made subject
only to certain conditions, precisely “to remove all clouds of doubt regarding
the validity of these instruments” which do not bear his signature.[5] The fulfillment of the conditions must be
proven to be extant in every case.
The grant of approval under Order
16-05 is premised on two conditions: (1) full payment of the purchase price of
the land; and (2) compliance with all the other requirements for the issuance
of the Deed of Conveyance. There is no
dispute as to the manner of determining full payment of the purchase price. The variance lies in determining “compliance
with all other requirements for the issuance of the Deed of Conveyance” under
Act No. 1120.[6]
The ponencia maintains that one
still needs to present a Sale Certificate that bears the signature of the Department
Secretary, since Order 16-05 refers only to a Deed of Conveyance,[7]
citing Section 15 of Act No. 1120 which reads:
SECTION 15. The Government hereby reserves the title to each and every parcel of land sold under the provisions of this Act until full payment of all installments or purchase money and interest by the purchaser has been made, and any sale or encumbrance made by him shall be invalid as against the Government of the Philippine Islands and shall be in all respects subordinate to its prior claim.
The right of possession and purchase acquired by certificates of sale signed under the provisions hereof by purchasers of friar lands, pending final payment and the issuance of title, shall be considered as personal property for the purposes of serving as security for mortgages and shall be considered as such in judicial proceedings relative to such security. (emphasis and underscoring supplied)
As to what provisions
under Act No. 1120 require the signing by the Department Secretary of the
Certificate of Sale, the ponencia[8]
points to Section 11. But the “approval”
mentioned in the second paragraph of Section 11 refers to sales contracted prior
to the enactment in 1904 of Act No. 1120.
Thus Section 11 reads:
SECTION 11. Should any person who is the actual and bona fide settler upon, and occupant of, any portion of said lands at the time the same is conveyed to the Government of the Philippine Islands desire to purchase the land so occupied by him, he shall be entitled to do so at the actual cost thereof to the Government, and shall be granted fifteen years from the date of the purchase in which to pay for the same in equal annual installments, should he so desire paying interest at the rate of four per centum per annum on all deferred payments.
And the contracts of sale made
prior to the approval of this Act
may be extended, in the discretion of the Director of Lands, for a period of
not more than ten years from the date on which said contracts must expire under
the provisions of Act Numbered Eleven hundred and twenty. The terms of purchase shall be agreed upon
between the purchaser and the Director of Lands, subject to the approval of
the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Both in case of lease and of
sale of vacant lands under the provisions of section nine of this Act, the
Director of Lands shall notify the municipal president or municipal presidents
of the municipality or municipalities in which said lands lie of said lease or
sale before the same takes place. Upon
receipt of such notification by said municipal president or municipal
presidents the latter shall publish the same for three consecutive days, by
bandillos, in the poblacion and barrio or barrios affected, and shall certify
all these acts to the Director of Lands who shall then, and not before, execute
a lease or proceed to make the said sale with preference, other conditions
being equal, to the purchaser who has been a tenant or bona fide occupant at
any time of the said lands or part thereof, and if there has been more than one
occupant to the last tenant or occupant: Provided, however, That no lease or
sale of vacant lands made in accordance with this section shall be valid nor of
any effect without the requisite as to publication by bandillos, above provided:
Provided, further, that the provisions of this paragraph shall not apply to
leases or sales made to any provincial or municipal government or any
subdivision, branch, or entity of the Government. (emphasis, italics and
underscoring supplied)
The ponencia[9] also
points to Section 12. But the signature
referred to therein is that of the “settler” or “occupant,” to be affixed on
the delivery “receipt” (not on the Certificate of
SECTION 12. It shall be the duty of the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands by proper investigation to ascertain what is the actual value of the parcel of land held by each settler and occupant, taking into consideration the location and quality of each holding of land, and any other circumstances giving its value. The basis of valuation shall likewise be, so far as practicable, such that the aggregate of the values of all the holdings included in each particular tract shall be equal to the cost to the Government to the entire tract, including the cost of surveys, administration and interest upon the purchase money to the time of sale. When the cost thereof shall have been thus ascertained, the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands shall give the said settler and occupant a certificate which shall set forth in detail that the Government has agreed to sell to such settler and occupant the amount of land so held by him, at the price so fixed, payable as provided in this Act at the office of the Chief of Bureau of Public Lands, in gold coin of the United States or its equivalent in Philippine currency, and that upon the payment of the final installment together with all accrued interest the Government will convey to such settler and occupant the said land so held by him by proper instrument of conveyance, which shall be issued and become effective in the manner provided in section one hundred and twenty-two of the Land Registration Act. The Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands shall, in each instance where a certificate is given to the settler and occupant of any holding, take his formal receipt showing the delivery of such certificate, signed by said settler and occupant.
SECTION 13. The acceptance by the settler and occupant of such certificate shall be considered as an agreement by him to pay the purchase price so fixed and in the installments and at the interest specified in the certificate, and he shall from such acceptance become a debtor to the Government in the amount together with all accrued interest. In the event that any such settler and occupant may desire to pay for his holding of said lands in cash, or within a shorter period of time than that above specified, he shall be allowed to do so, and if payment be made in cash the lands shall at once be conveyed to him as above provided. But if purchase is made by installments, the certificate shall so state in accordance with the facts of the transaction; Provided, however, That every settler and occupant who desires to purchase his holding must enter into the agreement to purchase such holding by accepting the said certificate and executing the said receipt whenever called on to do so by the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands, and a failure on the part of the settler and occupant to comply with this requirement shall be considered as a refusal to purchase, and he shall be ousted as above provided and thereafter his holding may be leased or sold as in case of unoccupied lands: And provided further, That the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands in this discretion may require to any settler and occupant so desiring to purchase that, pending the investigation requisite to fix the precise extent of his holding and its cost he shall attorn to the Government as its tenant and pay a reasonable rent for the use of his holding; but no such lease shall be for a longer term that three years, and refusal on the part of any settler and occupant so desiring to purchase to execute a lease pending such investigation shall be treated as a refusal either to lease or to purchase, and the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands shall proceed to oust him as in this Act provided. (emphasis, italics and underscoring supplied)
IN FINE, there is no
statutory basis for the requirement of the Department Secretary’s signature
on the Certificate of Sale, apart from a strained deduction of Section 18.
A deeper consideration of
the operative act of compliance with the requirement in Section 18 that “[n]o
lease or sale made by Chief of the Bureau Public Lands under the provisions
of this Act shall be valid until approved
by the Secretary” is in order.[10]
The general proposition is
that a petitioner’s claim of ownership must fail in the absence of positive
evidence showing the Department Secretary’s approval, which cannot simply be
presumed or inferred from certain acts.[11]
Jurisprudential review is
gainful only insofar as settling that the “approval” by the Department
Secretary is indispensable to the validity of the sale. Case
law does not categorically state that
the required “approval” must be in the form of a signature on the Certificate of
What then is the positive
evidence of “approval” to lend validity to the sale of friar lands?
The ponencia[19]
concludes, as a matter of course on the strength of Sections 11, 12 and 15,
that the certificate of sale must be signed
by the Department Secretary for the sale to be valid. As discussed earlier, these three Sections
neither support the theory that such signing is required in the sale
certificate nor shed light to the specifics of approval.
I submit
that the Department Secretary’s signature on the certificate of sale is not
one of the “requirements for the issuance of the Deed of Conveyance under Act
No. 1120.” To require another signature
of the Department Secretary on the Certificate of Sale, on top of that deemed
placed by Order 16-05 on the Deed of Conveyance, is to impose a redundant requirement and render irrelevant the spirit of said Order.
IN FINE,
petitioners having complied with the conditions for the applicability of Order
16-05, their Deed of Conveyance is “deemed signed or otherwise ratified” by
said Order.
It bears emphasis that Order 16-05 is a positive act on the
part of the Department Secretary to remedy the situation where, all other
conditions having been established by competent evidence, the signature of
the Department Secretary is lacking. The
Order aims to rectify a previous governmental inaction on an otherwise legally
valid claim, or affirm an earlier approval shown to be apparent and consistent
by a credible paper trail.
Obviously,
the incumbent Department Secretary can no longer probe into the deep recesses
of his deceased predecessors, or unearth irretrievably tattered documents at a
time when the country and its records had long been torn by war, just to
satisfy himself with an explanation in the withholding of the signature. The meat of Order 16-05 contemplates such
bone of contention as in the present case.
The cloud of doubt regarding the validity of the conveyance
to petitioners’ predecessors-in-interest having been removed by Order No.
16-05, petitioners’ title over
WHEREFORE, I
VOTE to declare the Manotoks’ Transfer Certificate of Title No. RT-22481
(372302) VALID.
I CONCUR with the denial of the Barqueses’ petition for reconstitution
of title, and the declaration of nullity of Felicitas B. Manahan’s Deed of
Conveyance No. V-200022.
CONCHITA
CARPIO MORALES
Associate Justice
[1] Cañete v. Genuino Ice Company, Inc., G.R. No. 154080, January 22, 2008, 542 SCRA 206, 215 citing Pinlac v. Court of Appeals, 402 Phil. 684, 699-701 (2001) which cited the Comments and Recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee created by the then Ministry of Natural Resources, as embodied in its Special Order No. 426, series of 1986.
[2] Ponencia, p. 87.
[3]
[4] Reply (to Dissenting Opinion), p. 4.
[5] DENR
Memorandum Order No. 16-05 (
[6] Section 12 of Act No. 1120 provides that upon the payment of the final installment together with all accrued interest the Government will convey to such settler and occupant the said land so held by him by proper instrument of conveyance, which shall be issued and become effective in the manner provided in Section 122 of the Land Registration Act.
[7] Reply (to Dissenting Opinion), pp. 2-3.
[8] Ponencia, pp. 92-93.
[9]
[10] Vide Commonwealth Act No. 32 (1936), Sec. 2 also uses the phrase “subject to the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce” and later the “Secretary of Natural Resources,” as amended by Commonwealth Act No. 316 (1938).
[11] Alonso v. Cebu Country Club, Inc., 462 Phil. 546, 561 (2003).
[12] 426 Phil. 61 (2002).
[13]
[14] 274 Phil. 30 (1991).
[15]
[16] 380 Phil. 400 (2000).
[17]
[18] 381 Phil. 819 (2000). The Court denoted that a transfer or assignment of a certificate of sale only needs to be submitted to the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands for his approval and registration. In the present case, the lack of the approval of the Department Secretary in the Assignments of Sale Certificate is inconsequential (vide Act No. 1120, Sec. 16).
[19] Ponencia, pp. 92-93.