GR L 19462; (July 1975) (Digest)
G.R. No. L-19462 July 25, 1975
ANTONIO V. ZARAGOZA, petitioner-appellant, vs. ENRIQUE A. DIAZ and RUFINA BALITE, oppositors-appellees.
FACTS
Petitioner-appellant Antonio Zaragoza sought a writ of possession from the Court of First Instance of Rizal following an extrajudicial foreclosure sale. He alleged that mortgagors Enrique Diaz and Rufina Balite executed a real estate mortgage over a parcel of land in his favor. Upon their default, he foreclosed the mortgage, with the property being sold to him as the highest bidder at a public auction on August 30, 1961. He filed an ex parte petition under Act No. 3135 , as amended, offering to post the required bond equivalent to twelve months’ use of the property.
Oppositors-appellees Diaz and Balite resisted the petition. They claimed absolute ownership of the property and asserted that their signatures on the mortgage deed were falsified. They revealed that a civil action for the annulment of the mortgage (Civil Case No. 5949) was pending between the same parties. The trial court denied Zaragoza’s petition, citing serious doubts regarding the authenticity of the signatures on the mortgage deed and the pendency of the annulment case questioning the mortgage’s validity.
ISSUE
Whether the trial court correctly denied the petition for a writ of possession under Section 7 of Act No. 3135 , as amended.
RULING
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal as moot and academic. The legal logic centers on the temporal limitation of the right invoked. Act No. 3135 grants the purchaser at a foreclosure sale the right to petition for a writ of possession during the one-year redemption period provided by Section 6 of the same law. This period is a statutory condition for exercising that specific remedy.
In this case, the foreclosure sale occurred on August 30, 1961. The appeal was decided on July 25, 1975. The one-year redemption period had long expired. Consequently, Zaragoza’s right to seek a writ of possession under the specific provision of Section 7 of Act 3135, which he exclusively relied upon, was extinguished by the passage of time. The Court therefore found it unnecessary to resolve the substantive dispute over whether the trial court had discretion to deny the writ based on the pending annulment case or the alleged forgery. Since the statutory basis for the requested relief had lapsed, the issue presented was no longer legally viable for adjudication.