350 Phil. 373
MENDOZA, J.:
This is a
petition for review on certiorari of the decision[1] of the Court of Appeals in C.A.-G.R.
CV No. 31546, reversing the decision of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 106,
Quezon City, dismissing the complaint for specific performance brought by
private respondent. The appellate court
instead ordered petitioner to convey the property in question to private
respondent.
The background
of this case is as follows.
Petitioner
Fidela Mananzala is the registered owner of a parcel of land located at Bagong
Pagasa, Quezon City, under Transfer Certificate of Title No. 32314, issued on
January 15, 1985. Petitioner had been
in actual possession of the land since 1955 by virtue of a conditional sale
made in her favor by the Philippine Homesite and Housing Corporation (PHHC),
now the National Housing Authority (NHA). In 1960, however, the PHHC awarded the land to Nestor and Elisea Mercado
who took possession of the land in that year.
Petitioner
contested the award in court. She
claimed precedence not only in actual occupation of the land but also in
application for its purchase. Her right
to the land was upheld by the Court of First Instance of Quezon City, whose
decision was later affirmed by the Intermediate Appellate Court. Consequently,
the PHHC cancelled the award made to the Mercado spouses.
On December 14,
1984, petitioner paid in full the price of the land under the deed of
conditional sale. The NHA therefore
executed a deed of sale in her favor on January 14, 1985.[2] The next day a transfer certificate
of title to the lot was issued in the name of petitioner.[3]
On January 31,
1985, private respondent Corazon Aranez brought this action below for specific
performance against petitioner to enforce a deed of sale covering the same lot
allegedly entered into between her and petitioner on March 22, 1960. The contract[4] stipulated that title to the land
shall be transferred to private respondent within 30 days after full payment of
the purchase price by petitioner to the PHHC.[5] The deed was notarized by Atty. Pio
Lopez, who was petitioner’s counsel in her case against the Mercado spouses.[6] Private respondent alleged that
petitioner refused, despite repeated demands made by her, to comply with the
stipulation in their contract. She
prayed that petitioner be ordered to transfer ownership of the land to her.
Petitioner
denied selling the land to private respondent. She contended that the deed was a forgery and that her signature was
secured through fraud by private respondent and by Atty. Pio Lopez. In the alternative, she averred that the
deed of sale was void because it was made before the actual award of the land
to her and that it was made in violation of the prohibition in the rules and
regulations of the PHHC against the subsequent disposition of the land within
one year of the issuance of the title.
The trial court
dismissed the complaint. Although finding petitioner’s signature on the deed to
be genuine, it nevertheless ruled that there was no perfected contract of sale
because petitioner never really intended to sell the land. Furthermore, the trial court also found the
alleged contract to be null and void because, at the time of the sale,
petitioner was not yet the owner thereof.[7]
On appeal, the
Court of Appeals reversed.[8] It held that there was a meeting of
the minds between the parties as evidenced by the signature of the petitioner
on the deed of sale which the National Bureau of Investigation found to be
genuine. The notarization of the deed
gave rise to the presumption of its regularity.[9] The Court of Appeals further held
that petitioner could validly sell the land even before the actual award to her
pursuant to Art. 1461 of the Civil Code, which provides that things having a
potential existence may be the object of a contract of sale. Consequently, the court ordered petitioner
to transfer ownership of the land to private respondent. Hence this petition.
Petitioner
alleges two grounds for her petition, to wit:
I.
THE RESPONDENT COURT OF APPEALS
ERRED IN VALIDATING A CONTRACT EXECUTED IN VIOLATION OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY.
II.
THE CHALLENGED NOTARIAL DOCUMENT,
APART FROM BEING CONTRARY TO LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY, DOES NOT SERVE THE
PRESUMPTION OF REGULARITY.
We shall deal
with these questions in inverse order.
First. Petitioner avers that the appellate court erred in relying on the
presumption of regularity accorded to notarial documents in holding the deed of
sale between her and private respondent to be valid.
This is not
true. The decision of the appellate
court shows that the court also took into account the evidence of the
parties. It relied on the report of the
National Bureau of Investigation which found the signature of the petitioner on
the questioned document to be genuine.[10] The NBI report was based on a
comparison of the signature on the deed and ten specimen signatures of
petitioner’s. The trial court itself
arrived at the same conclusion as to the genuiness and due execution of the
deed.[11] Indeed, petitioner’s claim that her signature on the deed had been
procured through fraud is contradicted by her allegation in court that the
signature on the deed was not hers. As she claimed in her testimony, “That is
not my signature.”[12] If the signature on the deed was not her signature, then it could not have
been procured by fraud.
Anyway, that the
signature of petitioner in the deed in question is genuine is a factual finding
of both the trial court and the Court of Appeals which, in the absence of very
clear evidence to the contrary, this Court will not revise.[13]
Second. The other question is whether the
contract between petitioner and private respondent is valid and binding. Petitioner invokes the ruling in Ibay v.
Intermediate Appellate Court.[14] In that case the transfer of rights
to petitioner was disapproved by the PHHC in view of Resolution No. 82
providing that the “sale of more than one lot per person shall not be
permitted.” Petitioner was already the
holder of a land by reason of a previous award made to him by the PHHC. Accordingly, the right of the awardee to
recover the possession of the lot from him was upheld. In this case, however, there is no evidence
that the sale to private respondent of the lot was made in violation of any
rule of the PHHC. This issue was never
passed upon by either the trial court or the Court of Appeals.
The above
argument, as well as petitioner’s contention that the sale to private
respondent is void because it was made within one year after the title to the
property was issued in the name of petitioner, while raised by petitioner in
her answer in the trial court, was not passed upon and she did not urge it
anymore except now. As already noted, the trial court based its decision on its
finding that the sale was void on the ground that there was no meeting of the
minds of the parties. When its decision
was appealed, petitioner (as appellee) did not urge her original defenses to
uphold the decision in her favor. She
merely relied on the ruling of the trial court.[15] The appellate court, in reversing
the trial court, simply considered the issues raised by the trial court’s
decision, namely, whether petitioner’s signature on the deed was a forgery, whether
there was a meeting of the minds of the parties, and whether there could be a
sale of future property. The question
whether the sale was void because it was made within the one-year period of
prohibition to petitioner as awardee was never briefed or in any way argued
below. For all intents and purposes,
therefore, petitioner waived this ground and cannot now urge it as ground for
reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals.
WHEREFORE, the decision of the Court of
Appeals is AFFIRMED.
SO ORDERED.
[1] Per
Justice Manuel C. Herrera (chairman) and concurred in by Justice Cezar D.
Francisco and Justice Buenaventura J. Guerrero (members).
[2] Exh. 2.
[3] Exh. 1.
[4] Exhs. A (plaintiff’s)
and 3(defendant’s). Both are exact copies of each other.
[5] Ibid.,
Stipulation 3.
[6] Ibid., TSN,
testimony of Fidela Manansala, pp. 9-15, Oct. 17, 1985.
[7] Record,
pp. 432-433; the trial court citing Arts. 1305 and 1409 of the Civil
Code.
[8] Rollo, pp.
27-32.
[9] Citing Joson v.
Baltazar, 194 SCRA 114, 119 (1991) and Favor v. Court of Appeals, 194
SCRA 308, 313 (1991).
[10] Exh. S.
[11] Record,
p. 432.
[12] TSN, p.
9, Oct. 17, 1985.
[13] De Guzman
v. Court of Appeals, 260 SCRA 389 (1996); Meneses v. Court of Appeals,
246 SCRA 162, 171 (1995).
[14] 209 SCRA
510 (1992).
[15] Court of
Appeals Rollo, pp. 56-59.