Claimants to UP land ask Supreme Court to reconsider order

MANILA, Philippines - Two claimants to a 78-hectare property along Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision upholding the title of the University of the Philippines.

In their petition, Jorge Chin and Renato Mallari said the SC might have not thoroughly appreciated the merits of the case in arriving at the decision.

The SC upheld their ownership the land in question in February 2000 but the decision was reversed on November 2003 and the SC revoked their titles.

However, Chin and Mallari said the SC’s 2003 resolution should be declared void because the 2000 decision was already final and executory.

In the 2000 decision, the SC granted ownership of the contested land to Chin and Mallari, whose titles were from the heirs of Antonio Pael.

They dismissed the claim of Pedro Destura, who claimed he bought the property from a representative of the Pael family.

Two years later, the SC ruled that the property belongs to UP. In December 2001, the SC remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to determine if there was overlapping of titles.

In July 2003, the CA upheld the findings of a verification and relocation survey conducted by Department of Environment and Natural Resources that properties under the title of UP overlapped the properties of Chin and Mallari.

It was found that the titles of the petitioners were issued in 1938, while those of UP in 1949. Petitioners said the SC had “misapprehended” the findings of the DENR and CA.

UP misled the SC into ruling that the titles of Chin and Mallari overlapped those of UP, they added.

Prospero Anave, Chin’s and Mallari’s lawyer, said the SC “should not have reversed the CA report” because the SC “is not a trier of facts.”

“Factual matters cannot be inquired into by the Supreme Court in an appeal for certiorari – the Court can no longer be tasked to go over the proofs presented by the parties and analyze, assess and weigh them to ascertain if the trial court and the appellate court were correct in according superior credit to this or that piece of evidence of one party or the other,” he said.

The SC relied solely on UP’s interpretation of the results of the DENR survey without taking into consideration the clarification issued by the reviewer, he added.

The DENR reviewer, assistant regional executive director for legal services Rogelio Tiongson, said it was UP’s property that overlapped the property of petitioners, Anave said. UP is leasing the land to Ayala Land Inc. – Edu Punay