G.R. No. L-15841. October 30, 1964.
Calixto Golfeo, in his capacity as Judicial Administrator of the Intestate of the deceased Rufina Gerona, petitioner, vs. The Court of Appeals and So Chu Bee, respondents.

FACTS

This case involves a 28-hectare land in Bulan, Sorsogon. In a prior 1954 case (CA- G.R. No. 8063 -R), the Court of Appeals, in a suit filed by So Chu Bee to quiet title, declared that: (1) a purported contract of sale between So Chu Bee and the original owner, Rufino Gerona (who died in 1940), was fictitious; (2) So Chu Bee possessed the land in trust for Gerona’s heirs; and (3) 2.5 hectares belonged specifically to Esperanza Golfeo, Gerona’s daughter, as an advance inheritance. Subsequently, in 1955, Calixto Golfeo, as judicial administrator of Gerona’s estate, filed the present action to recover the land. The lower courts dismissed the complaint, ruling that So Chu Bee had acquired ownership by acquisitive prescription, having possessed the land adversely for over ten years.

ISSUE

Whether So Chu Bee, previously declared a trustee of the property, validly acquired ownership of the land through acquisitive prescription.

RULING

No. The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, holding that So Chu Bee did not acquire the land by prescription. The Court anchored its decision on the principles governing trustees and adverse possession. The prior 1954 judgment conclusively established that as of 1949, So Chu Bee held the land in trust for the Gerona heirs. A trustee cannot acquire title by prescription against the beneficiary unless there is a clear, open, and unequivocal repudiation of the trust communicated to the beneficiary. The Court found the claimed acts of repudiation insufficient to start the prescriptive period. The act of transferring the tax declaration to his name in 1940 was not proven to have been known by the heirs at that time and, standing alone, did not constitute the required unequivocal act of repudiation. The refusal to share the produce, which occurred in 1946, was the only potential act of repudiation. Counting from 1946, the ten-year prescriptive period had not yet elapsed when the present suit was filed in 1955. The Court deemed it unnecessary to resolve the ancillary issue of whether So Chu Bee, as an alien, could acquire private agricultural land by prescription. Consequently, the land was adjudged to belong to Gerona’s intestate estate. So Chu Bee was ordered to deliver the land to the administrator and to pay specified damages representing the unremitted share of the produce.