G.R. No. 44466. January 30, 1989.
MAGDALENA V. ACOSTA, JULIANA V. ACOSTA and ROSITA V. ACOSTA, petitioners, vs. HON. JUDGE ANDRES B. PLAN, Presiding Judge of the Court of First Instance of Isabela, Branch II, HON. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES, THE DIRECTOR OF LANDS, and BERNARDINO MAGDAY, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioners filed an accion publiciana in the Court of First Instance of Isabela. After judgment was rendered against them on October 3, 1975, they filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied on December 12, 1975. They subsequently filed a motion for leave to appeal as paupers and a notice of appeal, which the trial court granted on January 19, 1976. Believing that as pauper litigants they were not required to submit a record on appeal, petitioners waited for the trial court to elevate the entire records to the Court of Appeals pursuant to their understanding of Section 16, Rule 41 of the Rules of Court.
On June 16, 1976, the trial court dismissed their appeal for failure to file a record on appeal. Their motion for reconsideration was denied on August 23, 1976, prompting this petition for certiorari. The sole issue is whether a pauper litigant must timely submit a record on appeal to perfect an appeal.

ISSUE

Whether the petitioners’ appeal was correctly dismissed for tardiness in submitting their record on appeal.

RULING

No. The appeal should be reinstated. Under the procedural rules in force at the time the appeal was taken, specifically Section 16, Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, a pauper litigant was indeed required to file a record on appeal, though it did not need to be printed. The rule explicitly stated that the clerk shall transmit “the entire record of the case, including… the record on appeal” to the appellate court. This distinguished it from appeals in special civil actions under Section 17 of the same rule, where the original record is transmitted in lieu of a record on appeal. The petitioners’ belief that no record on appeal was required was therefore erroneous under the then-prevailing rules.
However, the procedural landscape changed with the enactment of Batas Pambansa Blg. 129 (The Judiciary Reorganization Act of 1980) and the accompanying Interim Rules. These new rules abolished the requirement for a record on appeal for the perfection of an appeal. In Alday vs. Camilon, the Supreme Court ruled that this procedural change, being remedial in nature, should be applied retroactively to pending cases. Procedural laws are generally given retroactive effect to actions pending and undetermined at the time of their passage, as they do not create new rights but merely alter the methods of enforcing existing ones. Consequently, since the case was still pending before the Supreme Court at the time B.P. Blg. 129 took full effect, the new rule dispensing with the record on appeal applies retroactively for the benefit of the petitioners. The dismissal of their appeal based on a procedural requirement that was subsequently abolished was thus erroneous. The trial court’s decision and orders of dismissal are set aside, and the trial court is ordered to forward the entire records to the Court of Appeals for a resolution of the appeal on its merits.