The Cebu Country Club wins its land case

Some years back, a controversy erupted in 1992 when the late Francisco Alonso, the former owner of the property now under the Cebu Country Club sued the club. He said the sale of this property by his father Tomas Alonso was defective as the final deed of sale was not registered by the Register of Deeds and more importantly it lacked the signature of the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources as required by law.

Last week, I got hold of a copy of the Notice of Judgment by the First Division of the Supreme Court dated April 20, 2010 that declared with finality that the Cebu Country Club, Inc. is the exclusive owner of Lot No.727-D-2 of the Banilad Friar Lands Estate, as confirmed by Republic Act. No.9443. This was the law that Rep. Raul del Mar passed in Congress. His bill was signed into law by Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on July 27, 2007 which in effect corrected the deficiency that was brought to light in the case that was filed against the Cebu Country Club.

The petitioners alleged that there was fraud when the Cebu Country Club reconstituted its land titles but the Regional Trial Court (RTC) dismissed this case because the petitioners could not prove that there was fraud when the title was reconstituted. Of course that was difficult to prove; after all, this happened way back in the 1930s. The case was elevated to the Appellate Court (CA) but the decision was still favorable to the Cebu Country Club. This case, no doubt, has enriched our jurisprudence.

But things started to look bad for the Country Club when on Jan. 31, 2002, the Supreme Court denied the petition for review and set aside the decision of the Court of Appeals and the Regional Trial Court Branch 08. It declared, “In lieu thereof, we dismiss the complaint and counterclaim of the parties in Civil Cases No. CEB12926 of the trial court. We declare that Lot No.727-D-2 of the Banilad Friar Lands Estate covered by Original Certificate of Title Nos. 251, 232, and 253 legally belongs to the Government of the Philippines.” Now this was one very surprising ruling in the sense that legal doctrines always maintained that when there are two litigants, the court must render a decision on either of the litigants and should never rule in favor of a non-litigant or a 3rd party, which in this case was the Philippine Government.

In this age of text messaging and the Internet, rumors were widespread that someone within the Supreme Court must have “profited” in that ruling. Indeed, it was difficult to fathom that Supreme Court ruling. However, the final decision on this case gave us a clearer idea of why the SC dismissed the rulings of the RTC and the CA. In the end, the Supreme Court acted with wisdom in its final ruling on this case.

What was unseen when this case was filed in 1992 was that, it would send a ripple effect on all the hundreds of thousands of property owners within the Banilad Friar Lands Estate, including the huge tracts of land belonging to the Cebu Archdiocese. This is because so many records of the Register of Deeds were lost during the bombings of US Forces during World War II. Thus, chances are high that the original records of properties sold at more or less the same time when Alonso sold his property to the Cebu Country Club might also lack the signatures of the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Thus, it might open a Pandora’s box of land cases.

Hence, that Republic Act. No. 9443 virtually cured the defects that could have caused more court cases had the Cebu Country Club lost its case. In the end, the Supreme Court came up with a “Solomonic” decision by not giving the property to the Country Club or to the petitioners because even they had no clear title to that land for the very same reason why they filed the case against the country club. The SC clearly stated that the CA erred in ruling that the country club was owner of Lot No. 727-D2.

So why did the Supreme Court end up ruling in favor of the Cebu Country Club in its last decision on April 20, 2010? As it turned out, there is a law governing Friar Lands that government has to dispose of it. Hence, the SC agreed with the CA that there was nothing fraudulent in the reconstituted title of the Cebu Country Club. There was also a presumption of regularity in the Torrens Title that the SC recognized.

Above all, the SC acknowledged the reality that the Cebu Country Club was in possession of the property in question since 1931 and paid the realty taxes on the land complete with receipts showing real estate tax payments since 1949, while the petitioners could not show any single receipt of real estate payments. So this ends one of Cebu’s famous landmark land controversies. While the Cebu Country Club celebrates its victory, Justice still hangs for many land owners who are in a similar situation with their land cases still languishing in our courts. Let’s hope our Judges would speed it up.