Be it
enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippine in
legislature assembled and by the authority of the same:
Section 1. All persons claiming title to agricultural
parcels of land that have been the object of the cadastral proceedings,
who at the time of the survey or thereafter were in actual possession
of the same, but for some justifiable reason had been unable to file
their claim in the proper court during the period established by law,
and for such reason said parcels of land have been, or are about to be
declared land of the public domain, by virtue of judicial proceedings
instituted within the fifteen years next preceding the approval of this
Act, are hereby granted the right to petition within three years after
the date on which this Act shall take effect, for a reopening of the
judicial proceedings under the provisions of Act Numbered Twenty-two
hundred and fifty-nine, as amended, but only with respect to such of
said parcels of land as have not been alienated, reserved, leased,
granted, or otherwise provisionally or permanently disposed of by the
Government and the competent Court of First Instance, upon receiving
such petition shall notify the Government through the Solicitor General
and if after hearing the parties, said court shall find that all
conditions herein established have been complied with, and that all
taxes, interest and penalties thereof have been paid from the time when
land taxes should have been collected until the day when the motion is
prescribed, it shall order said judicial proceedings reopened as if no
action has been taken on such parcels.
Sec. 2. Upon the taking effect of this Act, the
Solicitor-General shall cause its translation in the local dialect to
be properly published through the municipal president of every town
wherein the lands declared to be of public domain in a cadastral
proceedings are located, which official may have it announced in the
towns and barrios by public criers or published by the newspapers in
said dialect of general circulation in the municipality.
Sec. 3. This Act shall take effect on the date
when the Governor-General shall, by means of a proclamation issued for
said purpose, announce that this Act has been expressly or tacitly
approved by the President of the United States, as provided in the Act
of Congress approved on August twenty-nine, nineteen hundred and
sixteen, entitled "An Act to declare the purpose of the people of the
United States as to the future political status of the people of the
Philippine Islands, and to provide a more autonomous government of
those Islands.
Approved: February 1, 1935
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