G.R. No. 49739 . January 20, 1989.
BONIFACIO LOPEZ, SUBSTITUTED BY ROBERTA LLANERAS, VIRGINIA LOPEZ, BONIFACIO LOPEZ, JR. and FERNANDO LOPEZ, petitioners, vs. HON. COURT OF APPEALS, PEDRO PINOHERMOSO, SUBSTITUTED BY JUANA P. REMOLANA, et al., respondents.

FACTS

The property in dispute is a homestead originally granted to Tiburcio Pinohermoso, who was married to Casiana Flores. Casiana died in 1924. The homestead patent was issued and Original Certificate of Title No. 1406 was registered solely in Tiburcio’s name in 1926. In 1939, Tiburcio sold the entire land to the spouses Bonifacio Lopez and Roberta Llaneras. The sale was registered, and Transfer Certificate of Title No. 15186 was issued in the buyers’ names in 1940. The Lopez spouses took possession and paid realty taxes.
In 1958, the heirs of Casiana Flores, represented by her children and grandchildren, filed a complaint. They alleged the land was conjugal property of Tiburcio and Casiana. They argued that upon Casiana’s death, her one-half share passed to her heirs, and Tiburcio could only administer, not alienate, that share. They sought reconveyance of the one-half share, claiming the sale was void as to that portion. The trial court and the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the heirs, ordering the reconveyance of a one-half portion, subject to reimbursement for improvements.

ISSUE

Whether the action filed by the respondents in 1958 to recover a one-half share of the property, based on the alleged conjugal nature of the homestead and the void sale thereof by Tiburcio in 1939, had already prescribed.

RULING

Yes, the action had prescribed. The Supreme Court reversed the decisions of the lower courts and dismissed the complaint. The contract of sale was executed in 1939, governed by the old Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure ( Act No. 190 ). Regardless of whether the action is characterized as one for annulment of a voidable sale due to fraud or for reconveyance based on an implied trust, the applicable prescriptive periods had lapsed.
For an action to annul a sale based on fraud, the prescriptive period under the old Code of Civil Procedure was four years from the discovery of the fraud. The respondents or their predecessors discovered the sale in 1940 when the petitioners showed them the deed and demanded they vacate. Filing the case in 1958, nineteen years later, was far beyond the four-year limit. Alternatively, even if an implied trust were to be recognized, the longest prescriptive period under Act No. 190 was ten years. The respondents’ excuses for the delay—poverty and the Japanese occupation—were insufficient to toll prescription. Their right to assert any claim over the registered property was extinguished by prescription due to their own negligence and abandonment. The petitioners, as registered owners under a Torrens title, were entitled to the protection of finality.