GR 159131; (July, 2009) (Digest)
G.R. No. 159131 ; July 27, 2009
HEIRS OF TORIBIO WAGA, represented by MERBA A. WAGA, Petitioners, vs. ISABELO SACABIN, Respondent.
FACTS
Petitioners are the registered owners under Original Certificate of Title (OCT) No. P-8599, issued via Free Patent in 1968, covering Lot No. 450. In 1991, respondent Isabelo Sacabin filed a protest with the DENR, alleging that a 790-square-meter portion of his adjacent Lot No. 452 was erroneously included in the petitioners’ title. A DENR investigation, including an ocular inspection, found seven fifty-year-old coconut trees forming a common boundary and concluded the disputed area was part of respondent’s lot. Respondent later filed a complaint for Amendment of Title, Ejectment, and Damages. The trial court found that respondent and his predecessors-in-interest had been in open, continuous, peaceful, and adverse possession of Lot No. 452, including the disputed portion, since 1940. It thus ordered the segregation and reconveyance of the 790 sq.m. to respondent. The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision.
ISSUE
Whether the complaint for amendment of OCT No. P-8599, which seeks the reconveyance of the disputed property, has already prescribed.
RULING
The Supreme Court denied the petition and affirmed the lower courts’ decisions. The prescriptive period for reconveyance based on an implied or constructive trust did not apply to bar respondent’s action. The Court emphasized that an action for reconveyance of property wrongfully registered under the Torrens system does not prescribe when the plaintiff is in possession of the disputed land. This is because the action is essentially one to quiet title, which is imprescriptible for a party in possession. The factual findings, which petitioners did not controvert, established that respondent and his predecessors had been in possession of the disputed property in the concept of owners since 1940. In contrast, petitioners’ claim rested solely on a certificate of title that, by mistake, included another’s land. The Torrens system does not protect a usurper or permit the perpetration of fraud against the true owner. Since respondent was in possession, his action to correct the error in the title and recover his property was not subject to the one-year period for review of a decree of registration, nor to the ordinary prescriptive period for reconveyance. Reconveyance was deemed just and proper to remedy the intolerable anomaly of petitioners holding title to land they never possessed.