Atty. Julius Gregory Delgado
PALAJOS VS. ABAD, G.R. NO 205832 (07 MARCH 2022): LATEST JURISPRUDENCE ON DETERMINIG PRIOR PHYSICAL POSSESSION IN FORCIBLE ENTRY CASES
Respondent Jose Manolo Abad (“respondent Abad”) and his siblings filed a complaint for forcible entry against petitioner Gorgonio Palajos along with other individuals before the Metropolitan Trial Court (“MeTC”) of Quezon City. Respondent Abad and his co-plaintiffs claimed before the lower court that they are registered owners of three adjacent and contiguous parcels of land in North Fairview, Quezon City covered by a Torrens Title with an aggregate area if 1,200 square meters (“subject property”) which they acquired from their parents in 1999. Sometime in September or October 2001, they took actual possession of the subject property and constructed a concrete perimeter fence around it.
On the third week of January 2006, respondent Abad and his siblings discovered that petitioner Palajos and his co-deforciants, by means of force upon things, strategy and stealth and without their knowledge and consent, destroyed portions of the perimeter fence, entered the subject property and constructed their houses thereon, depriving them of their possession. Upon discovery, respondent Abad and his siblings demanded petitioner Palajos and other deforciants to remove their houses and structures but to no avail.
As a defense, petitioner Palajos claimed that he entered the subject property by virtue of a Deed of Sale with B.C. Regalado & Co., paid real property taxes, presented proofs of billing of his Bayantel telephone and procured a registration application for his son in the same address. The MeTC of Quezon City ruled in favor of respondent Abad and his siblings ordering petitioner Palajos and his co-deforciants to vacate the property. On appeal, the Regional Trial Court reversed and set aside the ruling of the MeTC of Quezon City. The Court of Appeals reversed and set aside the decision on appeal and reinstated the ruling of the MeTC, hence, the filing of the Petition for Review on Certiorari.
The Supreme Court denied the petition and ruled in favor of respondent Abad. The Court held that in forcible entry, three elements must be alleged and proved:
(a) plaintiff had prior physical possession of the property before the defendant encroached on the property;
(b) plaintiff was deprived of possession either by force, intimidation, threat, strategy or stealth by defendant; and
(c) that the action was filed within one (1) year from the time the plaintiff learned of his deprivation of the physical possession of the property, except that when the entry is through stealth, the one (1) year period is counted from the time the plaintiff-owner or legal possessor learned of the deprivation of the physical possession of the property.
The Supreme Court discussed two issues which petitioner Palajos raised: 1) that the action was filed beyond the one-year prescriptive period; and 2) respondent Abad had no prior physical possession. On the first issue, the Supreme Court easily brushed aside petitioner’s argument stating that respondent Abad ad his siblings discovered the clandestine entry of petitioner Palajos and co-deforciants on the third week of January 2006 and they filed the case on 23 February 2006.
On the second issue and the more substantial one, the Supreme Court held that prior physical possession can be acquired not only by material occupation but also by the fact that a thing is subject to the action of one’s will or by the proper acts and legal formalities established for acquiring such right:
“In addition, We have likewise consistently held that ‘possession can be acquired not only by material occupation, but also by the fact that a thing is subject to the action of one’s will or by the proper acts and legal formalities established for acquiring such right. Our ruling in Mangaser v. Ugay is instructive:
Possession can be acquired by juridical acts. These are acts to which the law gives the force of acts of possession. Examples of these are donations, succession, execution and registration of public instruments, inscription of possessory information titles and the like. The reason for this exceptional rule is that possession in the eyes of the law does not mean that a man has to have his feet on every square meter of ground before it can be said that he is in possession. It is sufficient that petitioner was able to subject the property to the action of his will.
Further, in Madayag v. Madayag, We likewise pointed out that:
As correctly held by the RTC, thus, Patrick has sufficiently proven prior possession of the subject property by juridical act, specifically, through the issuance of a Certificate of Lot Award and subsequent sale of the subject property in his favor, and the registration thereof in the Torrens system in his name. As consistently held by the Court, if we are to disregard such juridical acts and unreasonably constrict the concept of prior physical possession to ‘physical occupation’ in its rigid literal sense, then it will open floodgates of absurdity wherein land intruders will be favored under the law than Torrens title holders. Such intruders may then easily be favored in a summary procedure of ejectment by mere assertion of physical occupation. On the other hand, Torrens title holders would have to resort to the protracted litigation in an ordinary civil procedure by filing either an accion publiciana or accion reinvindicatoria while intruders, in the meantime, enjoy the use of another man’s land.
In the instant case, the Court found respondent Abad and his siblings to have acquired prior physical possession when they inherited and acquired the property from their parents in 1999 although they did not put the same in active use. One of the reason why the Court did not believe petitioner Palajos is his conflicting claim. At first, he claimed that his basis of occupation is a Deed of Sale from B.C. Regalado & Co. Later on, in his Position Paper, he claimed that property was assigned by the Intestate Estate of Don Hermogenes and Antonio Rodriguez.
In this case, the Supreme Court correctly applied the doctrine of provisionally determining the issue of ownership to decide the issue of possession. The reason that the court did not believe the claim of ownership is petitioner’s conflicting statements. This author encountered similar squatting syndicate in the past wherein they will enter titled properties, defend their occupation in protracted litigation by showing Spanish Titles like of the Tallano’s, Rodriguez’s, San Pedro’s and the likes and collecting rent and litigation fees from the settlers. In this case, the Supreme Court served justice to the rightful owner of the property.