Philippine Supreme Court Resolutions > Year 2011 > April 2011 Resolutions > [G.R. No. 178164 : April 11, 2011] VICENTE GARACHICO III, ET AL. V. SPOUSES HOMER ALUMISIN AND CARINA QUIOGUE, AND JAIME CARDIÑO :

Please take notice that the Court, Second Division, issued a Resolution dated 11 April 2011 which reads as follows: 

G.R. No. 178164 (Vicente Garachico III, et al. v. Spouses Homer Alumisin and Carina Quiogue, and Jaime Cardi�o). - This is a petition for review of the Decision^[1]  of the Court of Appeals (CA) dated August 30, 2006 dismissing the petition for annulment of judgment of the Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 39 of Caiapan, Oriental Mindoro, which allowed the reconstitution of title of Transfer Certificate of Title No. T-4087.

Petitioners assail the Order of the RTC dated December 12, 1995 granting the petition for judicial reconstitution of Transfer Certificate of Tide No. T-4087 on the bases of the lax declaration, technical description and plan of Lot 3267, Cad. 104d in the names of Spouses Jaime Cardino and Monina Cardino. Respondent Spouses Homer Alumisin and Carina Quiogue were subsequent purchasers in good faith of the subject land containing an area of 5,710 square meters.

Petitioners argue that the RTC had no jurisdiction over the petition for judicial reconstitution, as well as over them as indispensable parties, as it failed to comply with the provisions of Republic Act No. 26.^[2] They also alleged the existence of extrinsic fraud considering that no notice of the proceedings was sent to them.

Respondents filed a Motion to Dismiss which was granted by the CA for the main reason, that petitioners do not have the legal personality to institute the present action.

Aggrieved, petitioners filed the instant petition.

After a careful consideration, the Court finds no reversible error in the Decision of the CA. In the first place, the CA found that the land in question was public land.^[3] As such, petitioners had no legal personality to file the action for the annulment of the RTC judgment It is the Solicitor General who, as the sole representative of the government, must initiate the action to protect the interests of the government in this case.

Moreover, the CA correctly found no merit in the petition, considering that petitioners claim to be owners of the subject land by their alleged adverse, open and continuous possession of the same subject land, when "their only act of possession is that a portion of the same is their free and direct access to and from their titled property and the Lumangbayan Bay."^[4] Petitioners alleged that in April 2002, respondents Alimusin constructed concrete fences with interlinks, depriving them of the use and enjoyment of that small strip of land which they had possessed for a very long time and, likewise, deprived them of their free access to and from Lumangbayan Bay.^[5] Thus, by their own admission in their petition, petitioners assail the reconstitution of title of the subject land in favor of respondents only because they have been deprived of the use and enjoyment of their free access to and from the Lumangbayan Bay.

It must be stressed that reconstitution of title denotes the restoration in the original form and condition of a lost or destroyed instrument attesting the title of a person over a piece of land. The purpose of reconstitution is to have the title reproduced in exactly the same way it has been when the loss or destruction occurred. It does not determine or resolve the ownership of the land covered by the lost or destroyed title.^[6] Nor can it pass title to the claimant. Any question of ownership and possession of the subject land must be threshed out in a separate suit.

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, the petition is DENIED. Mendoza, J., recused himself from the case due to prior action in the Court of Appeals; Del Castillo, J., designated additional member per Raffle dated 21 March 2011.

SO ORDERED.  

Very truly yours,

MA. LUISA L. LAUREA
  Clerk of Court

By:

(Sgd.) TERESITA AQUINO TUAZON
  Asst. Clerk of Court

Endnotes:

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^[1] Rollo, pp. 30-35.

^[2] "An Act providing a Special Procedure for the Reconstitution of Torrens Certificate of Title Lost or Destroyed,"' September 25, 1946 

^[3] Certification from the Land Registration Authority (LRA), rollo, p. 44; Certification from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, id. at 45; Certification from the Office of the Provincial Assessor, id. at 47. 

^[4] Id. at 33 

^[5] Petition, id. at 14. 

^[6] Heirs of Marcela Navarro v. Go, G.R. No. 176441, June 17, 2008, 564 SCRA 658.