GSIS vs. Santiago

GSIS vs. Santiago

G.R. No. 155206 October 28, 2003

FACTS:

Deceased spouses Jose Zulueta and Soledad Ramos obtained various loans from GSIS from 1956 to 1957 in the total amount of P3,117,000.00 secured by real estate mortgages over their parcels of land.

The Zuluetas failed to pay their loans to defendant GSIS and the latter foreclosed the real estate mortgages. On August 1974, the mortgaged properties were sold at public auction with defendant GSIS being the highest bidder.  Not all lots covered by the mortgaged titles, however, were sold.  Ninety-one (91) lots were expressly excluded from the auction since the lots were sufficient to pay for all the mortgage debts.  

A Certificate of Sale was issued later on and an Affidavit of Consolidation of Ownership was executed by defendant GSIS over Zulueta’s lots, including the lots, which as earlier stated, were already excluded from the foreclosure. On March 1980, GSIS sold the foreclosed properties to Yorkstown Development Corporation which sale was disapproved by the Office of the President. The sold properties were returned to GSIS and the land titles issued in favour of Yorkstown were subsequently cancelled.

Thereafter, GSIS began disposing the foreclosed lots including the excluded ones.

On April 7, 1990, Representative Eduardo Santiago and then plaintiff Antonio Vic Zulueta executed an agreement whereby Zulueta transferred all his rights and interests over the excluded lots.  Plaintiff Santiago’s lawyer wrote a demand letter dated May 11, 1989 to defendant GSIS asking for the return of the eighty-one (81) excluded lots. 

On May 7, 1990, Antonio Vic Zulueta, represented by Eduardo M. Santiago, filed with the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Pasig City, Branch 71, and a complaint for reconveyance of real estate against the GSIS.  Spouses Alfeo and Nenita Escasa, Manuel III and Sylvia G. Urbano, and Marciana P. Gonzales and the heirs of Mamerto Gonzales moved to be included as intervenors and filed their respective answers in intervention.  Subsequently, the petitioner, as defendant therein, filed its answer alleging inter alia that the action was barred by the statute of limitations and/or laches and that the complaint stated no cause of action.  Subsequently, Zulueta was substituted by Santiago as the plaintiff in the complaint a quo.  Upon the death of Santiago in 1996, he was substituted by his widow as the plaintiff. After due trial, the RTC rendered judgment against the petitioner ordering it to reconvey to the respondent, Rosario Enriquez Vda. De Santiago, in substitution of her deceased husband Eduardo, the seventy-eight lots excluded from the foreclosure sale.

ISSUES:

I.              Whether or not the petitioner acted in bad faith in consolidating ownership and causing the issuance of titles in its name over the subject lots, notwithstanding that these were expressly excluded from the foreclosure sale.

II.            Whether or not Petitioner’s defense on prescription is tenable.

HELD:

First Issue:

YES. The acts of defendant-appellant GSIS in concealing from the Zuluetas the existence of these excluded lots, in failing to notify or apprise the spouses Zulueta about the excluded lots from the time it consolidated its titles on their foreclosed properties, in failing to inform them when it entered into a contract of sale of the foreclosed properties to Yorkstown as well as when the said sale was revoked by then President during the same year, demonstrated a clear effort on its part to defraud the spouses Zulueta and appropriate for itself the subject properties.  

Even if titles over the lots had been issued in the name of the defendant-appellant, still it could not legally claim ownership and absolute dominion over them because indefeasibility of title under the Torrens system does not attach to titles secured by fraud or misrepresentation. The fraud committed by defendant-appellant in the form of concealment of the existence of said lots and failure to return the same to the real owners after their exclusion from the foreclosure sale made defendant-appellant holders in bad faith.  It is well-settled that a holder in bad faith of a certificate of title is not entitled to the protection of the law for the law cannot be used as a shield for fraud.

Second Issue:                                                             

NO. On the issue of prescription, generally, an action for reconveyance of real property based on fraud prescribes in four years from the discovery of fraud; such discovery is deemed to have taken place upon the issuance of the certificate of title over the property.  Registration of real property is a constructive notice to all persons and, thus, the four-year period shall be counted therefrom. On the other hand, Article 1456 of the Civil Code provides:

Art. 1456.  If property is acquired through mistake or fraud, the person obtaining it is, by force of law, considered a trustee of an implied trust for the benefit of the person from whom the property comes.

An action for reconveyance based on implied or constructive trust prescribes in ten years from the alleged fraudulent registration or date of issuance of the certificate of title over the property.

The petitioner’s defense of prescription is untenable.  As held by the CA, the general rule that the discovery of fraud is deemed to have taken place upon the registration of real property because it is “considered a constructive notice to all persons” does not apply in this case.  

Contrary to its claim, the petitioner unarguably had the legal duty to return the subject lots to the Zuluetas. The petitioner’s attempts to justify its omission by insisting that it had no such duty under the mortgage contract is obviously clutching at straw.  Article 22 of the Civil Code explicitly provides that “every person who, through an act of performance by another, or any other means, acquires or comes into possession of something at the expense of the latter without just or legal ground, shall return the same to him.”