SC affirms resolution on land titles

http://www.mb.com.ph/node/202335

By REY G. PANALIGAN

The Supreme Court (SC) declared final Tuesday its March 31, 2009 resolution that affirmed the validity of the titles of the Manotok Realty, Inc., the Manotok Estate Corp., and the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, Inc. over about 100 hectares of prime land in Malabon City.

In a full court resolution, the SC ruled to deny with finality the motion for partial reconsideration filed by Manotok Estate Corp. “as the basic issues raised therein have been passed upon by this court and no substantial arguments were presented to warrant the reversal of the questioned resolution.”

It further ruled that “no further pleadings will be entertained” on the case.

In a resolution written by the now retired Justice Dante O. Tinga, the SC adopted the findings of the Court of Appeals (CA) that established the right of ownership of the school and the Manotok firms over the 100 hectares of land covered by Original Certificate of Title No. 994 that was registered on May 3, 1917 and not on April 19, 1917.

With the ruling, the SC nullified the certificates of title over the property in the names of the late Jose Dimson and his successors in interest, and CLT Realty Development Corp. whose titles over OCT No. 994 were traced back to April 19, 1917.

“In view of the established rights of ownership of both the Manotoks and Araneta over the contested properties, we find that the imputed flaws on their titles cannot defeat the valid claims of the Manotoks and Araneta over the disputed portions of the Maysilo Estate,” the SC said.

Court upholds Araneta, Manotok claims

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=news2_april6_2009

Court upholds Araneta, Manotok claims

By Rey E. Requejo

THE Supreme Court ended more than 30 years of litigation as it declared valid the land titles held by the Araneta and Manotok clans over 70 percent of the 1,342-hectare Maysilo Estate.

The high court upheld the findings of the Court of Appeals’ Special Division in an en banc resolution written by Associate Justice Dante Tinga.

The appellate court had established the rights of ownership of the Araneta Institute of Agriculture Inc., Manotok Realty Inc., and Manotok Estate Corp. over the pieces of property that were registered on May 3, 1917.

Eight justices concurred with the ruling, while Chief Justice Renato Puno, Associate Justices Consuelo Ynarez-Santiago, Antonio Carpio and Eduardo Nachura did not participate in the deliberations. Associate Justice Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez was on leave.

The Court rejected the titles to the pieces of property held by the deceased Jose Dimson, his successors, and CLT Realty Development Corp.

“In view of the established rights of ownership of both the Manotoks and Araneta over the contested properties, we find that the imputed flaws on their titles cannot defeat the valid claims of the Manotoks and Araneta over the disputed portions of the Maysilo Estate,” the high court said as it quoted the appellate court’s report on Nov. 26, 2008.

The appellate court had said that the titles being held by Dimson had all been derived from the May 3, 1917 registered title.

It said that the Aranetas’ claim had been “well substantiated and proven to be superior to that of Dimson’s

One transfer certificate on the property covers a parcel of land measuring 581,872 square meters, while another covers four parcels of land with a total land area of 390,383 square meters.

The appellate court also noted that portions of the lot being disputed by the Manotoks and CLT Realty were expropriated in 1947. And because those were for resale to tenants, the Manotoks were able to establish some of their titles derived from those that had been expropriated.

“The Court has verified that the titles [of the Manotoks], as stated by the Special Division, sufficiently indicate that they could be traced back to the titles acquired by the Republic when it expropriated portions of the Maysilo Estate in the 1940s,” the Court said.

‘‘On the other hand, the Manotok titles that were affirmed by the Special Division are traceable to the titles of the Republic and thus have benefited, as they should, from the cleansing effect the expropriation had on whatever flaws that attached to the previous titles.”

On Dec. 14, 2007, the high court affirmed the validity of the May 3, 1917 registered title as the only genuine title of the disputed property stretching over the cities of Malabon, Caloocan and Quezon.

That decision set aside the Nov. 29, 2005 decision of the Court’s Third Division upholding the Court of Appeals, which in turn affirmed the ruling of the Regional Trial Court that declared as valid the title 994 issued on April 19, 1917.

The high court ruled that “there is only one title No. 994: the mother title that was received for transcription by the Register of Deeds on May 3, 1917, and that should be the date that should be reckoned as the date of registration of the title.”

The Court of Appeals had been mandated to determine, among other things, which of the contending parties were able to trace back their claims of title to title 994 dated May 3, 1917, and whether the imputed flaws in the titles of Manotok Realty Inc. and Manotok Estate Corp., and the Araneta Institute of Agriculture Inc. were borne by the evidence.

The Manotoks and Aranetas had sought a reversal of the Nov. 29, 2005 high court decision that effectively nullified the land titles in their names.

The questioned appelate court rulings affirmed the lower court’s decisions awarding to CLT Realty and the late Jose Dimson the properties being claimed by the Manotoks and Aranetas.

Dimson had claimed that he was the absolute owner of 50-hectares of land at the Maysilo Estate in Potrero, Malabon. The lower court then ruled in his favor, prompting the Aranetas to appeal to the appelate court, which in turn affirmed the lower court’s decision.

The Aranetas appealed to the high court when the appelate court also denied its motion for reconsideration.

On Aug. 10, 1992, CLT sought to recover from Manotok Realty Inc. and Manotok Estate Corp. Lot 26 of the Maysilo Estate in an action filed before the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court, Branch 129. The court granted its petition, prompting the Manotoks to appeal to the Court of Appeals, which turned them down.

The Manotoks then elevated the case to the high court, which then consolidated the two cases.

SC Rules on Maysilo Land Case

SC rules on Maysilo land case

Reverses decisions of trial court, CA, own 3rd division; SC ruling affects 1,342 hectares in Metro Manila

Rey G. Panaligan

The Supreme Court (SC) has reversed the decisions of the trial court, the Court of Appeals (CA), and its own third division with a ruling that the original mother title over 1,342 hectares of prime land — known as the Maysilo Estate — in the cities of Quezon, Malabon, and Caloocan was Original Certificate of Title (OCT) No. 994 registered on May 3, 1917, and not “OCT 994” issued on April 19, 1917.

In resolution written by Justice Dante O. Tinga, the SC ruled that there is only one OCT No. 994 that was received for transcription by the Register of Deeds on May 3, 1917, and “that should be the date which should be reckoned as the date of registration of the title.”

“Any title that traces its source to OCT 994 dated April 17, 1917, is void, for such mother title is inexistent,” the SC said.

Senior Justice Leonardo A. Quisumbing and Justices Ma. Alicia Austria Martinez, Conchita Carpio Morales, Adolfo S. Azcuna, Minita V. Chico Nazario, and Teresita J. Leonardo de Castro concurred with the resolution.

Justice Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez, who wrote the Nov. 29, 2005 decision of the SC’s third division, dissented together with Justices Presbitero J. Velasco Jr. and Ruben T. Reyes.

Justice Renato C. Corona voted to grant the motions for reconsideration filed by Manotok Realty, Inc., and Manotok Estate Corporation, and the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, Inc., and to annul the titles issued in the names of CLT Realty and the heirs of Jose Dimson.

Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno did not take part due to his relationship with one of the counsel, while Justice Antonio Eduardo B. Nachura did not take part as he had appeared in the oral arguments in the case as then Solicitor General.

Justices Consuelo Ynares Santiago and Antonio T. Carpio also did not take part.

With the ruling, the SC, in effect, invalidated the titles over portions of the vast tracts of land in the three cities of Metro Manila registered in the names of CLT Realty Development Corporation and the heirs of Jose B. Dimson based on OCT 994 issued on April 19, 1917.

The Caloocan City court of first instance (now regional trial court) had validated the land titles of the Dimsons and CLT over portions of the Maysilo Estate. The trial court ruling was affirmed by the CA whose decision was upheld by the SC’s third division on Nov. 29, 2005.

But the SC said that while it is sufficient to invalidate the Dimson and CLT claims over the subject property merely on the basis of the inexistence of OCT 994 dated April 17, 1917, it decided to remand the case to the “Special Division of the Court of Appeals” for reception of further evidence. It named Associates Justice Josefina Guevara Salonga, Lucas Bersamin, Jaapar Dimaampao as members of the special division.

“Considering that the genuine OCT No. 994 is that issued on/registered on 3 May 1917, a remand would be appropriate to determine which of the parties, if any, derived valid title from the said genuine OCT No. 994,” the SC said.

It directed the CA’s special division to determine, among others, which of the contending parties are able to trace back their claims of title to OCT 994 dated May 3, 1917, and whether the imputed flaws in the titles of the Manotok Realty, Inc. and Manotok Estate Corporation, and the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, Inc., are borne by the evidence.

The remand was an offshoot of motions for reconsiderations filed by the Manotoks and the Araneta school which had asked the SC to reverse its third division decision on Nov. 29, 2005.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Gutierrez said the majority resolution written by Justice Tinga to remand the case to the CA “grossly violates the settled rule that no new issues shall be raised for the first time on appeal.”

“The remand of these cases to the appellate court is an attempt on his part to prolong the litigation and disturb the findings of the said courts sustained by overwhelming evidence,” she said.

Justice Gutierrez stressed that the titles of Dimson and his heirs and those of CLT Realty are valid, while “the titles of the Manotok Corporations and Araneta Institute are spurious.”

“These are the findings of the three trial courts and affirmed by the three divisions of the Court of Appeals. To litigate these findings once again will entirely change the settled jurisprudence of this Court. The doctrine that there should be an end to litigation has been seriously disturbed. This is a sad day for the Court,” she lamented

MAYSILO: LANDMARK DECISION

LANDMARK DECISON

By Adrian E. Cristobal

Manila Bulletin

IN the next few days, the Supreme Court will decide once and for all the Maysilo land dispute, which has been going on in the past 47 years. Affected are thousands of individuals who have been in peaceful possession of their property within the Maysilo estate, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, government lands (450 hectares) covering the Bonifacio Memorial Circle, portions of the North Expressway up to EDSA and McArthur Highway, private institutions such as the Manila Central University, De La Salle Araneta University, and University of the East, and private commercial establishments such as the Ever Grand Central, Araneta Square, Bonifacio Market, Eternal Garden Memorial Park, including 64 barangays in Caloocan.

Immediately affected are the Manotok family and the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, Inc., whose possession of the Maysilo property since the 1940s was challenged by Jose Dimson, a lawyer, in the 1960s. According to records, Dimson and his assignee, the CLT Development Corporation, in a series of legal actions, were able to get a favorable decision against the Manotok realty and ALA – until the case was elevated to the Supreme Court.

The Manotok family and ALA believe that a Supreme Court dismissal of the former Caloocan register of deeds, Yolanda Alfonso, for allowing the change of registration date of Maysilo Original Certificate of Title to make it appear that there were two titles, will determine the coming SC decision.

The Supreme Court rebuked Alfonso for “wreaking havoc on our land titling system.” Indeed, “havoc” has been with the titling system since this country’s commonwealth period.

MAYSILO: “Mother of all land titling scandals” part 2

AS I SEE IT
‘Mother of all land titling scandals’ (2)
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer
Last updated 02:43am (Mla time) 09/14/2007
(Continued from last Wednesday)

MANILA, Philippines — Claimant Jose Dimson was also able to get a favorable but highly questionable decision from the Court of First Instance of Rizal which awarded “whatever remains of Lots 25-A, 26, 27, 28 and 29 of the Maysilo Estate” to him.

Subsequently, Lot 26 found its way into the hands of CLT Realty Development Corp. But as Lot 26 is owned by the Manotoks through expropriation proceedings, they have questioned the awarding of the lot to Dimson and subsequently to CLT.

Instituting civil cases for recovery of possession of his property against AIA and the Manotoks, Dimson was able to get the Caloocan RTC, in 1993, to order AIA and the Manotoks to vacate the property. The basis of the order was the presentation by Dimson of a copy of OCT 994 with an earlier date than the OCT 994 submitted by AIA. Dimson’s copy of OCT 994 was dated April 19, 1917 while AIA’s was dated May 3, 1917.

Following a decision in MWSS vs CA, in which the Supreme Court said that where there are two TCTs over the same land the earlier date prevails, the Caloocan RTC upheld Dimson’s title.

The Court of Appeals sustained the lower court’s decision, and even the Supreme Court, on a petition for review, upheld the Court of Appeals saying it is bound by the findings of fact of the lower court because it is not a trier of facts. But what if the facts are wrong, as in this case? OCT 994 dated April 19, 1917, which was upheld by the lower court, was found out later to be fake.

The Manotoks have also raised the following arguments:

(1) OCT 994 dated May 3, 1917 is the real OCT as it has been upheld by the LRA, the DOJ, the Senate and the Caloocan Register of Deeds. And now with the Supreme Court itself dismissing the two registrars of deeds who illegally changed the date of registration of Dimson’s title to April 19, 1917, it is clear which claimant really owns the land.

(2) The Manotoks have a superior right of ownership because their title emanates from the Republic of the Philippines itself in whom paramount title to the land has been vested by expropriation. And even if the title by expropriation is discounted, the Manotok title can still be traced to OCT 994 dated May 3, 1917.

(3) The issue of whether or not only one valid OCT 994 was issued is of transcendental importance of which the Supreme Court should take cognizance because it involves a total of 1,660 hectares of prime land in Caloocan, Malabon and Quezon City where now stand various commercial buildings, high-rise condos, residential houses, schools and public buildings.

(4) The MWSS case does not apply to the present case because no pronouncement on the validity of Dimson’s petition before the Caloocan CFI was made by the Court because AIA was not a party in the MWSS case and the issues raised in the MWSS case are different.

(5) Dimson’s title was irregularly issued because it was made without the presentation of the owner’s duplicate TCT of the transferor (Section 55, Land Registration Act) and corresponding subdivision plan approved by the Bureau of Lands or the LRA.

(6) It is highly improbable that Dimson’s title came from OCT 994 because as early as 1920, the Maysilo Estate had already been partitioned and distributed to the different owners as shown in the cases of Bustamante vs Tuazon (47 PR 433), Dizon vs Rivera (48 PR 996), Republic vs Gonzales (94 PR 696) and Garcia vs CA (35 SCRA 380).

(7) In at least three cases pending in different courts, two in the Supreme Court and one in the Court of Appeals, the title of Dimson has been established to be spurious, nonexistent, fraudulent and of impossible origin (Phil-Ville Development and Housing Corp. vs CLT Realty Development Corp.-CA-GR CV 52606, Feb. 27, 2003; Alfonso vs Office of the President and Phil-Ville Development and Housing Corp.-GR 150091; and Republic of the Philippines vs Lilia Sevilla and Jose Seelin-CA GR CV 68299).

The Supreme Court will decide on the fate of some 300,000 individuals who have been in peaceful possession of their properties within the Maysilo Estate as well as major government institutions that have certain legal rights over the estate. The major institutions affected include government lands (450 hectares) from the Bonifacio Monument to portions of the North Expressway up to Edsa and MacArthur Highway; private institutions like the Manila Central University, De La-Salle Araneta University, and University of the East, private commercial buildings like the Ever Grand Central, Araneta Square, Bonifacio Market, Eternal Gardens Memorial Park and at least 64 barangays in Caloocan alone.

Already, unscrupulous groups have been threatening and harassing legitimate dwellers, property owners and taxpayers within the estate.

But the Supreme Court decision on the registrars of deeds should be enough basis for the tribunal to put an end once and for all to the legal battle and uncertainties over the Maysilo Estate. It is easy to determine which of the two claimants have a better right to the property. Dimson’s claim has no legal standing whatsoever, as the Supreme Court itself has declared that the OCT from which he is basing his claim to ownership is a spurious, falsified document.

It is now obvious that Dimson and those claiming under him have no legal basis to claim ownership of the Maysilo Estate. They should not be allowed to wreak havoc on our land titling system.

Maysilo: “Mother of all land titling scandals”

AS I SEE IT
‘Mother of all land titling scandals’
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer
Last updated 10:53pm (Mla time) 09/11/2007
THE SUPREME COURT EN BANC HEARD oral arguments for and against claimants to large tracts of prime land spanning four Metro Manila cities: Quezon, Caloocan, Malabon and Valenzuela. The Court will have to decide which of two original certificates of titles (OCTs) dating back to 1917, both numbered 994, and from which hundreds of transfer certificates of titles have emanated is authentic. The decision will finally settle what the late Chief Justice and Senate President Marcelo Fernan described as “the mother of all land title scandals in the country.” With Fernan as chair, the Senate justice and human rights committee, together with the committee on urban planning and housing resettlement, investigated this Maysilo Estate case.

The scandal started in 1962 when Caloocan City registrar of deeds Yolanda Alfonso, together with assistant registrar of deeds Norberto Vazquez Jr., allowed the change of registration date of an original certificate of title (OCT) of Maysilo Estate, making it appear that there were two such titles to the same huge track of land spanning portions of the four cities and affecting hundreds of thousands of residents and businessmen from Sangandaan all the way to Monumento in Caloocan, up to Balintawak in Quezon City, including portions of the North Luzon Expressway and Araneta Subdivision in Malabon. Now, two OCTs— OCT 994 issued on April 19, 1917 and OCT 994 issued on May 3, 1917—cover the same parcel of land. Ironically, it was the Supreme Court itself that made the confusion worse by accepting, in a 1992 decision, the existence of two OCTs and ruling that the OCT dated April 19, 1917, being issued earlier than the OCT dated May 3, 1917 was the superior and valid title. Thus, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) lost its huge compound in Caloocan under a three-decade-old TCT originating from OCT 994 of May 3, 1917, to a claimant whose title originated from OCT 994 dated April 1917. But a technical plotting by the Land Registration Authority (LRA) showed that the claimant’s “lot” was located more than 12,000 meters away from the MWSS property. This decision wreaked havoc on the country’s land titling system.

Then Justice Secretary Teofisto Guingona formed a fact-finding inter-agency committee chaired by Undersecretary Ricardo Nepomuceno Jr. The investigation found that OCT 994 dated April 19, 1917 was non-existent for being “a fabrication” by Alfonso and Vazquez who “acted maliciously, fraudulently and in bad faith” when they signed a TCT in the name of a person bearing a wrong date of registration.

The investigation report said Alfonso’s “acquiescence in the alteration of the date of registration of OCT 994 in the titles” of a person as well as her act of deliberately ignoring the legal safeguards, especially her failure to require the presentation of a subdivision plan duly approved by the LRA or by the Land Management Bureau, for the titles of the applicant, are sufficient basis to find her guilty of grave misconduct. President Joseph Estrada dismissed Alfonso and Vazquez for grave misconduct and dishonesty.

The dismissals were affirmed by the Supreme Court. Associate Justice Conchita Carpio Morales, who wrote the decision for the second division, stressed: “By failing to prevent the irregularity that she (Alfonso) had reason to suspect all along or to take immediate steps to rectify it, petitioner had tolerated the same and allowed it to wreak havoc on our land titling system. Sadly that condition continues to rear its ugly head today.”

This fabrication of OCT 994 dated April 19, 1917 has a bearing on the awarding by the Court of the vast Maysilo Estate to its rightful owners. The estate is being contested by claimants using the two OCTs: Manotok Realty and Real Estate Corp. and Araneta Institute of Agriculture Inc., which use OCT 994 dated May 3, 1917 as basis for their claim of ownership, and the heirs of Jose Dimson and his assignee, CLT Development Corp., who use OCT 994 dated April 19, 1917 as their legal basis.

An adverse decision based on the fake OCT would set a precedent that would endanger the rights of the rest of the country’s legitimate land title holders and the integrity of the country’s land titles.

The Manotoks and AIA have been in peaceful, continuous and legal possession of the Maysilo Estate since the 1940s. But some time in the 1960s, Dimson filed a case to claim ownership of the vast estate, using as basis the spurious OCT 994 dated April 19, 1917. Dimson was said to be a lawyer of Ma. Conception Vidal’s grandchild, Bernardino Rivera, and as payment for legal services rendered, the latter gave him a deed of conveyance of 25 percent of his share of the Maysilo Estate.

Then Pasig Judge Cecilia Muñoz Palma confirmed the conveyance but disallowed the actual awarding of property and title to Dimson in 1966 because his 25 percent share had already been properly adjudicated by Bernardino Rivera to his heirs and assignees. This meant there was no more available land to be given to Dimson.

In 1977, or 11 years later, Dimson moved to execute the deed of conveyance issued by the Pasig judge before a Caloocan court. Despite the irregularity and without the presentation of the original of OCT 994 and the subdivision plan approved by the LRA or the Bureau of Lands, Caloocan Judge Marcelino Sayo granted Dimson’s motion and issued in his favor TCT 15169 covering 500,000 sq m of Lot 25-A-2 of the Maysilo Estate. This lot is the property covered by the TCT of the AIA.

MAYSILO: Save the titling system

THE LONG VIEW
Save the titling system
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Inquirer
Last updated 01:04am (Mla time) 09/10/2007
MANILA, Philippines – You may recall that on Feb. 20, 2006, I wrote about a legal fight (“The value of a title”), just one of many cases in Caloocan where land-grabbing threatens to seriously undermine the credibility of the land titling system in our country. Property owners who acquired their properties in good faith, developed them, paid taxes on them, suddenly faced a claim by a lawyer that he, in fact, owned their properties.

That lawyer, Jose B. Dimson, claimed ownership of a very large property on the basis of a land title of doubtful authenticity but which, he claimed, predated the (up to that point) original title on which the subsequent titles of the property owners were based. Thus one claim affected dozens of properties. Despite evidence to invalidate that claim, Dimson’s case kept winning in the courts. Property owners doggedly fought the spurious claim. One such group is composed of the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, Manotok Realty, Inc., Sto. Niño Kapitbahay Association, Inc. and CLT Realty Corp.

The legal fight between the group I mentioned above, and the person claiming their land, has revealed some interesting details since I last wrote about it.

The lawyers of the claimant, Dimson, besides admitting he’d never actually possessed the lands he claimed, said he had never paid taxes on them either (which is a way of asserting responsible ownership). What’s more, Dimson’s own lawyers admitted their client had never been a lawyer at all. So how could he have obtained ownership of the properties he said he earned by way of lawyers’ fees?

Not to mention the impossibility of Dimson’s claims as to the person who transferred the land to him being entitled to do so. Dimson said he got his title to the land as attorney’s fees from a certain Bartolome Rivera. Rivera alleged in turn that he inherited his title as an heir of Ma. Concepcion Vidal. The courts, in the case of Republic v. Lilia Sevilla and Jose Seelin, held that “[t]hus, it is physically and genetically impossible for him [Bartolome Rivera] to be the grandson of Maria de la Concepcion Vidal.” The Land Registration Commission, in a report dated August 3, 1981, pointed out that “[i]f Bartolome Rivera was 65 years old in 1963 or thereabouts, he was born on or before 1898. If Maria de la Concepcion Vidal was 9 years old on or before December 3, 1912, she was born on or before 1903. Could a grandson be older than his grandmother?”

Not to mention Dimson basing his claim on a title that, he claimed, predated the title of the Araneta Institute of Agriculture group. He said his OCT was dated Apr. 19, 1917. Those whose lands he wanted to take away could only point to an OCT dated May 3, 1917. But when Dimson’s people were asked to produce their title, they could produce none. On the other hand, the aggrieved property owners demonstrated to the Supreme Court recently that only one OCT No. 994 existed: issued on May 3, 1917. No less than the Solicitor General then, Antonio Nachura, personally and formally presented to the Supreme Court en banc the original OCT No. 994 issued on May 3, 1917 (the original copy itself taken from the Land Registration Authority vault).

Reports of the Department of Justice and the Senate Fact-Finding Committee had also previously pointed out that Dimson’s (alleged) OCT was fraudulent. The Senate, upon investigating the matter, said Dimson’s so-called title was “a fabrication perpetrated by Mr. Norberto Vasquez, Jr., former Deputy Registrar of Deeds of Caloocan City” and by Atty. Yolanda Alfonso, Registrar of Deeds of Caloocan City, who “consented to the acquisition of the property by … her children adopting 19 April 1917 as the date of registration of OCT 994 knowing the same to be erroneous … is a clear case of dishonesty, malice and bad faith.” We know Alfonso did these things, because the Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal ordered by the Office of the President. The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeals.

The Department of Justice then issued a report stating that the two contested OCTs (Dimson’s fake and the one present property owners derived their titles from) were never actually presented to the Supreme Court. What the Supreme Court used as the basis for saying there were two OCT Nos. 994 were the certifications appearing on the faces of the TCTs submitted by the two sides: but in truth, only one OCT No. 994 existed, issued on May 3, 1917.

However, complicating matters is that the Supreme Court issued a decision in another case, which upheld a Court of Appeals decision that there were two OCTs and which then upheld Dimson’s as the original one. In a sense, the Supreme Court ended up trapped by the Court of Appeals’ refusal to take judicial notice of the findings of the Senate and Department of Justice. If a court, however, took these reports into evidence, it would shatter some of the previous assumptions made by the courts.

These details, and many more, are now before the Supreme Court. It has embarked on reviewing a decision by one of its own divisions. This review presents a last chance for it to reverse the court’s upholding of the Dimson fraud. With evidence aplenty to help rectify assumptions originally made by the courts, evidence gathered by the Senate and the Department of Justice, decades of lawful property owners being harassed and imperiled can come to an end.

The Supreme Court, acting as a whole, holds the preservation of the rule of law as it pertains to the ownership of land, in its hands. It can stem the tide of chaos in our titling system. Or it can open the floodgates to an epidemic of Dimson-style land-grabbing. A title can either mean something, or mean nothing: it can either be maintained by the rule of law or the law of the jungle.

MAYSILO: “Mother of all scams”

BREAKTIME
Mother of all scams
By Conrado Banal III
Inquirer
Last updated 06:03am (Mla time) 09/11/2007
MANILA, Philippines — Watch out!

Word is out that the Supreme Court en banc will soon come out with another ruling on the 50-year old controversy over the 1,600-hectare Maysilo estate.

In business, pundits are saying that with the booming real estate sector nowadays, everybody in the sector is on edge because of the cases — three cases all in all, actually.

Also monitoring the cases are some government offices and universities, not to mention large commercial outfits such as malls and markets.

Down here in my barangay, however, our hearts go out to the thousands upon thousands of families residing in Caloocan, Malabon, Valenzuela and Quezon City.

They, too, will likely be affected by the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling.

Sure, those three cases actually involve just 300 hectares of the Maysilo estate’s 1,600 hectares.

And, okay, those 300 hectares are already much larger than the entire Bonifacio Global City in Taguig.

Still, it is highly possible that the Supreme Court ruling on the 300-hectare case will spill over to the rest of the Maysilo estate straddling those four cities.

The estate covers some 450 hectares of government land, part of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx), huge commercial areas, three big universities and some 64 barangays in Caloocan City alone.

Look, the area is roughly three times the size of the entire city of San Juan — with or without the ousted President Joseph Estrada.

No wonder, the government and the business sector see a certain threat from those cases. It’s a potentially explosive case. People can be driven out of their homes and offices. You know — lots of homeless!

The brouhaha really started in the l960s, when a lawyer named Jose Dimson claimed in court to have the mother title to the entire Maysilo estate.

He declared ownership over 25 percent of the estate, telling the courts that the supposed owners used the lot as “payment” to him for “legal services.” Over the years, a corporation called CLT Realty somehow got to assume the claim of Dimson.

Thus CLT Realty, as claimant to those 300 hectares, became party to those three cases.

Just who are the people behind CLT Realty may be an interesting topic for another piece one of these days.

Anyway, on the other side of those cases against CLT Realty are the Manotok group (in one case), the Araneta Institute of Agriculture (in another) and the Sto. Niflo Kapitbahayan Association (in yet another).

Because of those 450 hectares of government land in the Maysilo estate, the Republic of the Philippines is an “intervenor.”

***

In the 1960s, anyway, the court in Pasig (under Judge Cecilia Muñoz Palma) recognized the conveyance of that particular 25 percent of the Maysilo estate to Dimson.

Still, the court rejected his position that the area should be awarded to him.

Some 10 years later, Dimson went to another venue, this time in Caloocan — for the execution of the conveyance of that 25 percent.

The Caloocan court awarded Dimson some 50 hectares. This is why Dimson got a title to a 50-hectare property.

Unfortunately, the same property already had an owner, the Araneta Institute of Agriculture, which became the Araneta University, which in turn is now part of the De La Salle education system.

And then in another court — in Rizal, this time — Dimson got an award for “whatever remains” of the certain lots in the Maysilo estate.

One of those lots (Lot 26) happened to be owned by the Manotok group.

The same lot eventually found its way into the hands of CLT Realty, which is the company in those cases before the Supreme Court.

In 1993, both the Araneta school and the Manotok group got court orders to vacate their properties.

And what, pray tell, was the basis for the orders?

Well it seems that Dimson presented a title dated April 19, 1917.

By some stroke of luck, or something, that date was only a few days earlier than the title held by both Araneta and Manotok — which was May 3, 1917.

Now Dimson — and thus CLT Realty — also won the case before the Court of Appeals.

Upon review, the Supreme Court upheld the CA, saying it was bound to adopt the findings of the lower courts since it was not a “trier” of facts.

Even, boss, if there was something blatantly wrong with the supposed “facts” established in the lower courts?

In recent years, the Senate and the Department of Justice discovered something awfully wrong with the mother title presented by Dimson — i.e., the CLT Realty’s side.

And that is, well, the title was nothing but a fake! Yes, the one dated April 19, 1917!

So much so that the late Senator Marcelo Fernan once called the whole thing the “mother of all land scams.”

Even the Supreme Court recently ruled as much, when it affirmed the dismissal of the former registrar of deeds of Caloocan City, a certain Yolanda Alfonso.

In effect, the former registrar allowed the change in the registration date of the mother title of the “Maysilo” estate, thus making it appear that there were actually two valid titles.

The Supreme Court upheld the Land Registration Authority in declaring the Dimson-inspired title as a “fabrication.”

There — that’s the mother title for the claim of the Dimson-CLT Realty group. The Supreme Court already said it was … well, fake!

Last year, the Supreme Court en banc heard the oral arguments of both sides of the cases over those 300 hectares.

In that hearing, the solicitor general himself, Eduardo Nachura, produced the original title, registered with the LRA, dated May 3, 1917 (and not April 19, 1917).

That’s the multibillion-peso question now facing the Supreme Court.

Sounds familiar for the Manotok family

This article written by Mr. Rod Fajardo III is very familiar to the Manotok Family. Like the University of the Philippines (UP), the Manotok family are being victimized by land-grabbing scammers or land-grabbing syndicates. The Manotoks have been in-possession of a large track of land for 85 years and actually have been occupying the said property for all these decades. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, and conveniently… “the case actually started with the burning of the Quezon City Hall sometime in 1988. The documents under the custody of the Register of Deeds were burned. Thus, arose the necessity of reconstituting documents, specially land titles”.

If there was no Fire, then clearly the Manotoks, who are in possession and are occupying the land,… would not have to face the land-grabbing syndicates who are armed with fake and forged documents.

CLAMPDOWN: UP goes after land grabbers
Rod P. Fajardo III

The Supreme Court made it plain enough when—for the nth time in September 2004—it upheld with finality the ownership of the University of the Philippines over its campus in Diliman, Quezon City. “We strongly admonish courts and unscrupulous lawyers to stop entertaining spurious cases seeking further to assail UP’s title,” it warned. “These cases open the dissolute avenues of graft to unscrupulous land-grabbers who prey like vultures upon the campus of UP. By such actions, they wittingly or unwittingly aid the hucksters who want to earn a quick buck by misleading the gullible to buy the Philippine counterpart of the proverbial London Bridge.”

If there is a hint of exasperation in the way the decision was worded, it must be because the Court is tired of repeating itself over the same issue for almost fifty years now. It first declared that UP is the rightful owner of the Diliman campus on October 31, 1959. Since then, it has decided eight more similar cases with the same verdict.

Even the Land Registration Authority (LRA) has set the record straight. In a report issued by its Verification Committee in August 1984, the LRA traced the origin of UP’s Transfer Certificate Title (TCT) No. 9462 which covers the University’s Diliman campus to the TCT No. 36048 of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Apparently, the Philippine Government executed a deed of sale in favor of UP on March 1, 1949 relative to TCT No. 36048. Thus, TCT No. 36048 was cancelled in lieu of TCT No. 9462 issued in the name of UP.

Going by these judicial declarations, UP should not have a problem with chasing away illegal settlers.
Yet this is not the case. In the past decades, UP has been busy keeping land grabbers at bay. It’s almost funny how all these claimants come out of the woodwork, their bogus papers matched only by their absurd claims.

But this is exactly what alarms UP. Where are these fake documents coming from? How do the claimants get hold of them? Armed with fake titles, they are able to get their day in court no matter if their claims run from the incredulous to the hilarious. Some of these claimants even manage to elevate their arguments to the Court of Appeals, and quite a few to the Supreme Court itself.

Is there an invisible hand that orchestrates these relentless and seemingly organized land-grabbing attacks against the UP property?

Unholy crusade
Only this October, for example, UP won a favorable decision from the Quezon City Regional Trial Court against St. Mary’s Crusade to Alleviate Poverty of Brethren Foundation Inc., which seeks the reconstitution of a parcel of land in Quezon City with an area of 4,304,623 square meters. The claim apparently encompasses the 493-hectare Diliman property.

St. Mary’s Crusade claims that the land area in question is covered by Original Certificate Title (OCT) No. 1609 which is owned by one Marcelino Tiburcio. On November 26, 1985, Tiburcio supposedly executed a Deed of Transfer and Conveyance of OCT No. 1609 in favor of St. Mary Village Association, Inc. It is based on this alleged Deed of Transfer and Conveyance that St. Mary’s Crusade is now laying claim over the property.

Interestingly, in 1989, an entity named St. Mary Village Association, Inc. filed a petition seeking the annulment of UP’s titles to its Diliman property based on an alleged Spanish grant issued on March 25, 1877 in favor of one Eladio Tiburcio. The trial court dismissed the petition on January 31, 1990.
The people behind St. Mary’s Crusade admit that they do not have the original certificate but they do have a technical description of the property in question, duly certified as correct by the National Archives of the Philippines and a certification issued by the Land Management Bureau of Manila. How did they get past these government agencies? But what the Office of the Vice President for Legal Affairs finds most curious is that these claimants refuse to identify in their petition all the persons that they claim would benefit from the property. Who exactly are these people?

A check on the background of the people behind St. Mary’s Crusade reveals that they are all residents of the Diliman campus, presently living in the housing area allotted by UP for its qualified personnel under its housing program. All but one of the petitioners had been former UP employees who had availed of and qualified for housing privileges. These employees subsequently resigned or retired from active service but refused to leave their respective housing units. They are, in short, illegal tenants, and therefore subject to eviction.

Monomania of lands
And then there’s the perplexing case of Prince Julian Morden Tallano. Here is a man who claims to be a descendant of King Luisong Tagean whose sons supposedly included Rajah Soliman and Lapu-Lapu. (This alleged filial relationship between Soliman and Lapu-Lapu—two prominent figures in the country’s history—has apparently escaped the attention of historians for it is not mentioned in textbooks.) And by virtue of his lineage, Tallano is now asserting ownership over several land titles. OCT No. T-01-4, for example, covers the whole archipelago and its four regions: Luzon, Visayas, Palawan-Zamboanga embracing Kalayaan and Sabah, and Mindanao. TCT No. T-408, on the other hand, covers 1.253 billion square meters of Metro Manila.

What is even more baffling is that despite the patent absurdities of such claims, the Court of First Instance (CFI) of Pasay City allegedly promulgated on November 4, 1975 an Order for Reconstitution of TCT No. T-408 and OCT No. T-01-4 , among other titles, in favor of Gregorio Madrigal Acopiado, Tallano’s supposed great great grandfather. As in the case of St. Mary’s Crusade, the original copy of the said decision was reportedly lost or, more specifically, destroyed in a fire that gutted the Pasay City Hall on January 18, 1992. Tallano’s group, however, claims they have a true copy of the decision certified by the Office of the Solicitor General.

In 2005, Tallano and a certain Anacleto Madrigal Acopiado filed with the Regional Trial Court Branch 220 of Quezon City a petition for the enforcement of the CFI-Pasay City’s 1975 decision. Acopiado insisted that by virtue of said judgment, UP’s TCT over its Diliman campus is null and void. Thus, UP should reconvey ownership over its Diliman property to the Acopiados.

Convinced that the alleged CFI judgment was secured through fraud, the UP System Office of Legal Affairs sought the assistance of the Office of the Solicitor General and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to determine the true identity of the claimants. In a report dated June 10, 2005, the NBI declared that Julian Morden Tallano is not a prince but an impostor who, many times in the past, had assumed different identities and provided different addresses with the evident aim of defrauding other people. Tallano, who turned out to be a native of Nueva Ecija, was also found to be the subject of several warrants of arrest for estafa, falsification of documents, and swindling, among many others.

The identity of Anacleto Madrigal Acopiado, meanwhile, could only be established by an altered death certificate issued by the Local Civil Registrar of Taguig, Manila on November 28, 1994. Moreover, the NBI could not find any document to prove that Don Gregorio Madrigal Acopiado exists or ever existed.

Cracking the whip
There are countless other spurious claims over the ownership of the UP Diliman campus currently docketed in trial courts. And, as long as equally spurious documents are readily available from the black market, many more are expected to come out.

This is the reason UP is going beyond asserting its ownership over its property. UP is now determined to go after these organized land-grabbing factions who are growing ever more brazen.

MAYSILO ESTATE: The Simple Solution

The solution to this controversial Maysilo Estate double-titling mess is simply:

THERE IS ONLY ONE OCT NO. 994 and that is the one dated May 3, 1917.

The other OCT No. 994 dated April 19, 1917 is definitely a forgery, a scam, an evil creation, an anomalous decision, and a bogus title.

If the Supreme Court will just see that the OCT No. 994 dated April 19, 1917 is dubious and the people behind this OCT have evil intentions, then this case would not have dragged this long.

Let us see if the Justice System in this country still has its integrity intact. Let us see if there is justice in this country. Or if the big bullies get away with this scam. Let us see if justice will prevail versus the people who think they are above the law.

The Justice System should go after these people behind the OCT No. 994 dated April 19, 1917 because they concocted an evil plot to steal and cheat.

The Land-Grabbing Syndicate should be stopped! This is a major scam!