G.R. No. 145169 ; May 13, 2004
Siena Realty Corporation, represented by Lydia Co Hao and Lilibeth Manlugon, petitioner, vs. Hon. Lolita Gal-lang, as Presiding Judge of the RTC of Manila, Branch 44; Anita Co Ng in trust for Rockefeller Ng; and the Court of Appeals, Special 13th Division, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner Siena Realty Corporation filed a petition for certiorari under Rule 65 with the Court of Appeals, assailing the Orders of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) that dismissed its complaint and denied its motion for reconsideration. The Court of Appeals, in a Resolution dated June 20, 2000, dismissed the petition for being filed out of time. The appellate court computed the 60-day reglementary period from petitioner’s receipt of the RTC’s initial Order dated October 20, 1999, ruling that the filing of a motion for reconsideration merely interrupted this period. Under this computation, the petition filed on June 7, 2000, was nine days late.
Petitioner filed a motion for reconsideration. While this motion was pending, the Supreme Court issued a Resolution in A.M. No. 00-2-03-SC, amending Section 4, Rule 65 of the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure, effective September 1, 2000. The amended rule explicitly states that the 60-day period for filing a petition for certiorari shall be counted from notice of the denial of a motion for reconsideration. The Court of Appeals, however, denied petitioner’s motion for reconsideration in a Resolution dated September 13, 2000, without applying the new, favorable amendment.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of Appeals committed grave abuse of discretion in denying petitioner’s motion for reconsideration without applying the Supreme Court’s amendatory resolution to Section 4, Rule 65.

RULING

The Supreme Court denied the petition. While the Court of Appeals erred in not taking mandatory judicial notice of the procedural amendment, the petition ultimately failed on substantive grounds. Under Section 1, Rule 129 of the Rules on Evidence, courts are mandated to take judicial notice of the official acts of the judicial department. The amendment to Rule 65, being procedural, applied retroactively to cases still pending and undetermined at the time of its effectivity. Since petitioner’s motion for reconsideration was still pending before the Court of Appeals on September 1, 2000, the amended rule—which would have made the petition timely—should have been applied.
Nevertheless, the petition for certiorari was an improper remedy. The RTC Order granting the motion to dismiss was a final order that disposed of the case, not an interlocutory one. A final order is subject to the remedy of an ordinary appeal under Rule 41, not a special civil action for certiorari under Rule 65. Certiorari is only available against interlocutory orders not subject to appeal, or when there is no appeal, or any plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Since an appeal was the correct remedy, the petition for certiorari was fundamentally infirm. Therefore, regardless of the timeliness issue, the petition was correctly dismissed.