Source: http://lawlibrary.chanrobles.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=30529:g-r-no-76564-may-25,-1990-south-city-homes,-inc-v-republic-of-the-phil-,-et-al&amp;catid=1263&amp;Itemid=566
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 22:26:49+00:00

Document:
SOUTH CITY HOMES, INC., Petitioner, v. REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES and COURT OF APPEALS, Respondents.
Jose S. Santos, Jr. for petitioner.
It is the position of the petitioner that Lot No. 5005 should be registered in its name for either of two reasons. The first is that the disputed strip of land really formed part of Lots 2381 and 2386-A but was omitted therefrom only because of the inaccuracies of the old system of cadastral surveys. The second is that it had acquired the property by prescription through uninterrupted possession thereof in concept of owner, by itself and its predecessors-in-interest, for more than forty years.
For its part, the Republic of the Philippines argues that the elongated piece of land between the two lots now owned by the petitioner used to be a canal which could not have been appropriated by the purchasers of the adjacent lots or their successors-in-interest. Neither could it be deemed included in the lots now owned by the petitioner because their respective technical descriptions indicate otherwise. Prescription is also not applicable because the petitioner has not established the requisite possession of the lot, as to manner and length, to justify judicial confirmation of title in its name.
The parties also differ on the nature of the disputed lot. The petitioner insists it is patrimonial property of the State, being part of the so-called Friar Lands, while the Republic maintains it is part of the public domain and cannot therefore be acquired by a private corporation. But this disagreement is irrelevant, as will appear later.
The Court has considered the issues and the arguments of the parties and finds that the petition has no merit.
If it is true that there was no canal between the two lots at the time of their survey, then the disputed strip of land should have been included as part of either of the two adjoining lots. It was not. The petitioner itself insists that the canal, if there ever was one, had disappeared after it had been filled with silt and dirt. The result was the segregation of a third and separate lot, now known as Lot No. 5005. Notably, the area of that dried-up canal is not negligible as to come under what the petitioner calls the allowable margin of error in the original survey.
No purchaser or lessee under this Act shall acquire any exclusive rights to any canal, ditch, reservoir, or other irrigation works, or to any water supply upon which such irrigation works are or may be dependent, but all of such irrigation works and water supplies shall remain under the exclusive control of the Government of the Philippine Islands and be administered under the direction of the Chief of the Bureau of Public Lands for the common benefit of those interest dependent upon them. And the Government reserves as a part of the contract of sale in each instance the right to levy an equitable contribution or tax for the maintenance of such irrigation works, the assessment of which shall be based upon the amount of benefits received, and each purchaser under this Act, by accepting the certificate of sale or deed herein provided to be given, shall be held to assent thereto. And it is further provided that all lands leased or conveyed under this Act shall remain subject to the right of such irrigation canals, ditches, and reservoirs as now exist or as the Government may hereafter see fit to construct.
According to the respondent court, the fact that the canal had been filled up did not change its nature as a canal; it was still a canal although it had dried up. We do not think so. A canal without water is not a canal. The status of a canal is not perpetual. Consequently, the above provision is not applicable and cannot defeat the petitioner’s claim to the disputed property either as part of two other lots or as a separate lot.
As we have already rejected the contention that the third lot was part of the other two lots, the petitioner must fall back on its claim of acquisitive prescription over it as a separate lot. Its submission is that its possession of the lot dates back to "time immemorial," by which tired phrase it is intended to convey the idea that the start of such possession can no longer be recollected. Indeed, it can be. The petitioner’s possession does not in fact go back to "time immemorial" but only to the recent remembered past.
Q	Now, since you testified that you worked both on Lot 2381 and Lot 2386-A as tenant thereof, did you as a tenant recall that you cultivated these two particular parcels of land in its entirety?
Q	Do you know that between these two parcels of land that you were working then, there is a strip of land included in the area you were working which is not included in the title to the two parcels of riceland?
A	Yes, sir, I came to know that. As a matter of fact, when I became tenant, my predecessor used to tell me that there is a strip in between the two parcels of riceland which I was working on. They even told me that the owners of the adjoining Lots 2381 and 2386 were lucky because there was added to their property a strip of land which they produced also rice but which is not included in their title.
The underscored portions stress the unreliableness of these declarations, which, in the case of Constantino, is also suspect as self-serving.
The testimony falls short of establishing the manner and length of possession required by law to vest prescriptive title in the petitioner to Lot No. 5005. For one thing, as the Solicitor General points out in his Comment, the claim of adverse ownership to the strip of land between their respective lots was not exclusive but shared by the predecessors-in-interest of the petitioner. For another, and more importantly, the length of possession claimed by the petitioner is not sufficient to vest prescriptive title in it.
Q	So you mean to convey to this Honorable Court that from the time of your predecessor up to your time as tenant, the owners of Lots 2381 and 2386-A have been in possession of this strip of land containing an area of 613 square meters more or less in the concept of owner, open, public and adversely against the whole world?
But the more telling consideration, as the Court sees it, is this. By the testimony of the two witnesses, the petitioner obviously meant to tack the possession of the two lots by the previous owners to its own possession. There was no need for this because the petitioner acquired ownership of Lot No. 2381 by assignment and Lot No. 2386-A by purchase; and such ownership includes the right of possession. The petitioner is not claiming prescriptive rights to these two lots, which had previously been registered in the name of the transferors. The lot it is claiming by prescription is Lot No. 5005, which it did not acquire from the owner of the other two lots, or from any previous private registered owner of the lot, as there was none.
Neither of the owners of Lots Nos. 2381 or 2386-A, in their respective deeds, transferred Lot No. 5005 to the petitioner; as already explained, Lot No. 5005 was not part of either of the two lots. The petitioner merely occupied the disputed strip of land believing it to be included in the two lots it had acquired from Koo Jun Eng and the Garcia spouses. However, even if it be conceded that the previous owners of the other two lots possessed the disputed lot, their possession cannot be tacked to the possession of the petitioner. The simple reason is that the possession of the said lot was not and could not have been transferred to the petitioner when it acquired Lots Nos. 2381 and 2386-A because these two lots did not include the third lot.
(1)	The present possessor may complete the period necessary for prescription by tacking his possession to that of his grantor or predecessor-in-interest.
In case the adverse claimant possesses by mistake an area greater, or less, than that expressed in his title, prescription shall be based on the possession.
This possession, following the above quoted rulings, should be limited only to that of the successor-in-interest; and in the case of the herein petitioner, it should begin from 1981 when it acquired the two adjacent lots and occupied as well the lot in question thinking it to be part of the other two.
It follows that when the application for registration of the lot in the name of the petitioner was filed in 1983, the applicant had been in possession of the property for less than three years. This was far too short of the prescriptive period required for acquisition of immovable property, which is ten years if the possession is in good faith and thirty years if in bad faith, or if the land is public.
The case of Director of Lands v. Intermediate Appellate Court, 12 on which the petitioner relied so strongly (to the point of simply invoking it in a supplemental petition instead of filing its memorandum), is not applicable. That decision, which reversed the case of Manila Electric Co. v. Castro-Bartolome, 13 involved a situation where the public land automatically became private as a result of prescription clearly and indubitably established by the claimant. In the case at bar, the petitioner’s claim is rejected not because it is a private corporation barred from acquiring public land but because it has failed to establish its title to the disputed lot, whatever its nature.
Narvasa (Chairman) and Medialdea, JJ., concur.
Gancayco and Griño-Aquino, JJ., is on leave.
1.	Rollo, pp. 7-8, 12.
2.	Decision penned by Judge Jose Mar Garcia.
3.	Castro-Bartolome, J., ponente; Camilon, Bidin, JJ., concurring; Ejercito, Coquia, JJ., dissenting.
4.	Original Records, p. 48.
5.	TSN, August 13, 1984, p. 4. Italics supplied.
6.	Ibid., p. 8. Italics supplied.
8.	Exhibit "Q," Folder of Exhibits.
9.	3 Am Jur 2d Adverse Possession 63, citing Jenkins v. Trager (CC) 40 F 726, error dismd 136 US 651, 34 L ed 557, 10 S Ct 1074; Hanlon v. Ten Hove, 235 Mich 227, 209 NW 169, 46 ALR 788; Kramper v. St. John’s Church, 131 Neb 840, 270 NW 478; Burns v. Crump, 245 NC 360, 95 SE2d 906; Newkirk v. Porter, 237 NC 115, 74 SE2d 235; Ramsey v. Ramsey, 229 NC 270, 49 SE2d 476; Boyce v. White, 227 NC 640, 44 SE2d 49; Masters v. Local Union No. 472, 146 Pa Super 143, 22 A2d 70; Erck v. Church, 87 Tenn 575, 11 SW 794; People v. Hagaman, 31 Tenn App 398, 215 SW2d 827. Italics supplied.
10.	Hanlon v. Ten Hove, 235 Mich 227, 209 NW 169, 46 ALR 788. Italics supplied.

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