G.R. No. L-19554; January 31, 1964
Purificacion Pascua, petitioner, vs. Hon. Jesus Y. Perez, et al., respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner Purificacion Pascua mortgaged two parcels of land to Elisa Paraiso Vda. de Verzosa to secure a loan. Upon Pascua’s failure to redeem, Verzosa extrajudicially foreclosed the mortgage and purchased the property at the sheriff’s sale. Pascua then filed an action to annul the foreclosure sale, alleging the mortgage was a usurious transaction. The Court of First Instance of Manila ruled in Pascua’s favor, declaring the transaction usurious and annulling the sheriff’s sale. The court’s decision ordered Verzosa to allow Pascua to redeem the properties upon payment of P20,100.00 plus legal interest, but it did not specify a time period within which Pascua must exercise this redemption.
After one year from the finality of that annulment decision, Verzosa filed a motion in the same case, arguing that Pascua had failed to redeem the property. She prayed for an order vesting title in her and cancelling the notice of lis pendens. The lower court granted this motion. Pascua filed this petition for certiorari, contending the court erred in finding she failed to redeem within a non-existent period and, alternatively, that the vesting order was issued without due process.

ISSUE

The primary issue is whether the lower court acted with grave abuse of discretion in issuing the order vesting title in Verzosa, given that its prior annulment decision did not fix a redemption period for Pascua.

RULING

The Supreme Court granted the petition and set aside the lower court’s vesting order. The legal logic is clear and twofold. First, the court found no legal basis for the lower court’s conclusion that Pascua failed to redeem within a one-year period. The annulment decision, while granting Pascua the right to redeem, conspicuously omitted any specification of a time limit for exercising that right. It is fundamentally unfair to declare a party delinquent for failing to act within a period that was never judicially prescribed. Pascua operated under the reasonable impression she had a reasonable time to redeem.
Second, and more critically, the procedure adopted by the lower court in directly vesting title was a gross violation of due process. The effect of the annulment decision was to restore Pascua’s ownership, subject only to her obligation to pay a specified sum to Verzosa. Verzosa’s remedy upon any perceived default was not to seek a new adjudication of title via a mere motion in the concluded annulment case. Her proper course was to file a motion for execution to enforce the money judgment. The vesting order effectively deprived Pascua of her property without the requisite separate action where her defenses could be fully heard, constituting a denial of due process. The order was therefore issued in grave abuse of discretion.