Ferrer-Lopez v. Honorable Court Of Appeals

PARAS, J.:

Petitioners are seeking 1) the reversal of the decision of the respondent Court of Appeals1 dated December 29, 1978, 2) the dismissal of the private respondents' complaint in the case below 3) the reconveyance to the petitioners of 2.6486 hectares or 26,486 sq.m. covered by O.C.T. #13505, Register of Deeds of Pangasinan which lot is at present in the name of private respondents and 4) the re-survey of subject lot actually purchased from Damasa Catalan by private respondents based on the actual "pilapil" and coconut trees boundaries as shown in the after ocular inspection report of the trial court's duly appointed commissioner and that of his rectified sketch.

Petitioners are the children of the late Dominga Velasco who inherited Lot 12509 of the Cadastral Survey of Malasiqui, Pangasinan. Petitioners contend that the area of said property was originally 54 hectares but 10 hectares were sold by their mother so that what they inherited by way of testamentary succession are the remaining 44 hectares. Petitioners maintain that private respondents are encroaching on the portion of the land which belongs to them, that what the father of private respondents bought from Damasa Catalan in 1935 was the adjoining western portion of the land with only a total of 25,704 sq.m.

or 2.5704 hectares and not a total area of 52,908 sq. m. as applied for by respondents in the registration of the land in 1957.

Petitioners allege that at the time of the Bureau of Lands Cadastral Survey in the year 1935 and 1936, Ramon Puzon was then representing (2) two conflicting interests; namely, as overseer of Dominga Velasco over her 54-hectare land and as overseer of his children in the land bought by them from Damasa Catalan. Petitioners surmise that Ramon Puzon pointed to the surveyor the boundary between the lot bought by his children, and that of Dominga Velasco as well as the places where the monuments would be placed. They contend that the ocular inspection report and sketch of the Court's Commissioner clearly and patently show the intentional deviation of the boundary line from the barrio road to the lower portion going towards the North which is more than one kilometer in length and that the deviation is definitely against the land of Dominga Velasco from whom the petitioners inherited.

Petitioners claim that private respondents were never in actual possession of the land in question and it was only sometime in February 1967 or a total of more than 32 years that private respondents first attempted to claim ownership over the alleged encroached portion of more than 2 1/2 hectares, which portion is part and parcel of the 44 hectares owned by Dominga Velasco. Petitioners maintain that they have been in successive, continuous, public, peaceful and uninterrupted possession of said 44 hectares including the questioned portion of more than 2 1/2 hectares, in the concept of absolute owners, with just and valid title to the exclusion of all other person for more than 60 years and up to the commencement of the litigation. On October 16, 1967, private respondents filed the complaint in the Court below docketed as Civil Case No.

D-2089 of the Court of First Instance of Pangasinan against petitioner herein and anchored their claim principally on the allegation that - "sometime in 1965 defendants and her tenants entered, encroached and took possession of a portion of around 2 1/2 hectares more or less on the southwestern part of the aforedescribed parcel of land, cultivating and/or tenanting, the same since then up to the present under the claim of void and ineffective title or ownership." (p. 3, Record on Appeal).

Private respondents maintain that the total area of petitioners' land is only 518,113 sq. m. or 51.8113 hectares; that when the Cadastral Survey of Lot 12509 was made, petitioners' mother was still living and that she herself caused the subdivision of Cadastral Lot 12509, into Lots 12509-A, 12509B, 12509-C, 12509-D, 12509-E and 12509-F and thereafter obtained in the same cadastral proceeding, original certificates of titles (Exhs.

G, G-1, G-2, G-3, & G-4) which she delivered in 1960 to the petitioners in whose names the lot was registered, to wit: Exhibit OCT Registered Owner Lot No Are No. 12513 Pedro Melencio 12509-A & 100,005 sqm G-4 Azucena Ungson 12509-B G-3 12512 Remedios Ferrer 12509-C 100,054sqm G-2 12511 Trinidad Ferrer 12509-D 100,081sqm G-1 12510 Rosario Ferrer 12509-E 100,021sqm G 12509 Antonio Ferrer 12509-F