G.R. No. L-18589; October 31, 1962
BALDOMERO BAUTISTA, ET AL., plaintiffs-appellants, vs. ALEJANDRO CABLAY, ET AL., defendants-appellees.

FACTS

The plaintiffs, heirs of Alberto Bautista, filed an action to recover two parcels of riceland in Pozorubio, Pangasinan. They alleged that during his lifetime, Alberto Bautista mortgaged the land to Anastacio Tuason to secure a P1,500 debt. They further claimed that Tuason held the property with the obligation to apply its annual produce to the debt, which arrangement they characterized as an antichresis, and that the debt had been fully paid. Upon Tuason’s death, the defendants succeeded to possession and refused to surrender the land despite demands.
The defendants, in their answer, raised the affirmative defenses of lack of cause of action and prescription. The lower court conducted a preliminary hearing specifically on these special defenses. Plaintiffs objected, arguing that a dismissal based on prescription is proper only if evident from the complaint’s allegations, and that their complaint alleged an antichresis—a right of possession that does not prescribe. The court overruled the objection, received evidence, and subsequently dismissed the case on the ground of prescription.

ISSUE

Whether the trial court correctly dismissed the complaint on the ground of prescription of action.

RULING

Yes, the Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal. The Court rejected the appellants’ argument that prescription can only be determined from the face of the complaint. This rule applies when a motion to dismiss is resolved without evidence. Here, the defense was pleaded in the answer, and the court properly held a preliminary hearing where both parties presented evidence on the issue, a procedure explicitly allowed by the rules.
On the merits, the evidence adduced during the hearing established that the property was not merely held under an antichretic arrangement. It revealed that in a prior civil case (Toralba and Tuason vs. Alberto Bautista), a money judgment was rendered against Alberto Bautista in 1933. The subject land was subsequently sold at a public auction in 1933 to satisfy the judgment, with a final deed of sale executed in 1935. After the redemption period lapsed, a writ of possession was issued in 1935, placing the buyers in possession. The property was later sold to defendant Daniel Frianeza in 1941 and then to Graciano Barroso in 1950.
Consequently, the defendants and their predecessors-in-interest had been in continuous, public, peaceful, and adverse possession of the land from May 7, 1935, until the complaint was filed on November 5, 1958—a period exceeding 33 years. Regardless of the nature of the original transaction alleged by the plaintiffs, this long period of adverse possession by the defendants, coupled with the sheriff’s final deed of sale, clearly barred the action through prescription. The order of dismissal was therefore correct.