Case Digest | Santos v. Mojica
Santos v. Mojica
26 SCRA703
Facts:
On March 19, 1959, eleven brothers and sisters, all surnamed Allanigue, brought an action against their sister, Lorenza Allanigue, her husband, Simeon Santos, Maria San Agustin and Felicidad San Agustin, for partition of a 360-square-meter lot and for the annulment of certain conveyances involving the same. Defendants having been declared in default, the trial court, after hearing the plaintiffs’ evidence, rendered judgment ordering the partition of the lot among the eleven plaintiffs and the defendant Lorenza Allanigue. In a subsequent order the court set off Lorenza Allanigue’s share against the amount that she had failed to pay as rents to the plaintiffs as directed in the decision.
A writ of execution was issued on the judgment ordering the defendants to vacate the lot and deliver its possession to the plaintiffs. Leonardo Santos, not a party defendant but a son of defendants Simeon Santos and Lorenza Allanigue, owned a house standing on the lot. He filed with the sheriff a third-party claim, and with the court, a motion to recall the writ of execution insofar as his house was concerned. The motion was denied. On March 15, 1962, the defendants and movant Leonardo Santos having failed to remove their houses from the lot within the period given them, the court ordered the sheriff to demolish said houses.
On April 2, 1962, Leonardo Santos and the defendants in the case as petitioners, filed in the Supreme Court a petition for certiorari and prohibition against Judge Angel H. Mojica, the Provincial Sheriff of Rizal and the plaintiffs in the case, as respondents. Among the issues raised therein was whether or not the lower court had jurisdiction to order the demolition of petitioners’ houses in that special civil action. In its decision of February 28, 1964, the Supreme Court denied the petition after finding that Leonardo Santos, who claimed to be the owner of a house and the portion of land on which it stood by purchase from his parents, did not follow the procedure sanctioned by law in vindicating his alleged ownership, i.e., he should have filed an ordinary civil action to vindicate his alleged ownership of the house and the portion of land on which it was built.
Issue:
Whether or not petitioner is a builder in bad faith.
Held:
The petition is denied, with treble costs against the petitioner. The writ of preliminary injunction issued by this Court is hereby dissolved.
Leonardo Santos’ house having been built and reconstructed (after March, 1962) into a bigger one after his predecessors-in-interest, his parents, had been summoned in 1959 in Civil Case No. 217-R, he must be deemed a builder in bad faith. As builder in bad faith he lost the improvement made by him consisting of the reconstructed house to the owners of the land without right to indemnity, pursuant to Article 449 of the Civil Code.
Related posts:
- Case Digest | Del Campo v. Abesia
- Property Case Digest | Santos v. Buenconsejo
- Case Digest | Santos v. Bernabe, et al.
- Case Digest | Piansay v. David
- Property Case Digest | Saenz v. Hermanos
- Property Case Digest | Jabonete v. Monteverde
- Case Digest | Lavarro v. Labitoria
- Property Case Digest | Purugganan v. Paredes
- Case Digest | Guido v. Borja
- Case Digest | De Guzman v. De la Fuente
