G.R. No. L-77541 November 29, 1988
HEIRS OF GREGORIO TENGCO, petitioners, vs. HEIRS OF JOSE and VICTORIA ALIWALAS and COURT OF APPEALS, respondents.

FACTS

The case involves Lot No. 3563 of the Arayat Cadastre. The late Dr. Jose Aliwalas obtained a homestead patent over the lot in 1936, which was registered, resulting in the issuance of Original Certificate of Title No. 159 in his name in 1937. He and his successors, including his widow Victoria L. Vda. de Aliwalas, thereafter paid real estate taxes and exercised acts of ownership, such as planting crops and trees through a caretaker. Upon Jose’s death, the lot was allotted to Victoria, and a new title was issued to her.
In 1973, the Heirs of Gregorio Tengco filed a free patent application over the same lot, claiming their predecessor had occupied and cultivated it since 1918. The Bureau of Lands, having lost the pre-war records of Aliwalas’s homestead patent due to a fire, granted the application and issued a free patent in 1974. This led Victoria to file an action to quiet title. The trial court ruled in her favor, declaring her the true owner and ordering the cancellation of the titles derived from the Tengco free patent. The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision.

ISSUE

The core issue is whether a subsequently issued free patent can prevail over a prior and registered homestead patent, thereby divesting the original grantee of title.

RULING

The Supreme Court denied the petition and affirmed the appellate court’s decision. The legal logic is anchored on the incontrovertibility and imprescriptibility of a registered title under the Torrens system. A homestead patent, once registered, becomes a veritable Torrens title. As held in Lopez v. Padilla, such a title is as conclusive and indefeasible as any other certificate of title issued under judicial proceedings. Consequently, the land ceases to be part of the public domain and is beyond the jurisdiction of the Director of Lands to dispose of.
The Court ruled that the Director of Lands had no authority to issue the free patent to the Tengcos in 1974 because the land was already private property, having been patented and titled to Aliwalas in 1937. The subsequent patent was therefore void ab initio. The loss of the Bureau’s pre-war records did not revert the land to the public domain; the Aliwalas title remained valid. The proper remedy for an allegedly fraudulent homestead patent is an action for reversion by the State, not a collateral attack through a separate free patent application. Furthermore, the Court upheld the factual findings of the lower courts that the Aliwalas family had exercised acts of possession, negating the petitioners’ claims of laches and acquisitive prescription, which cannot run against a registered owner.