MENDOZA v NAVARETTE, GR 82531 SEPT 30, 1992

TOPIC: Article 420, Free Patent over private land is void

FACTS:

Plaintiff filed a complaint for annulment of title, partition, and damages against
respondents alleging that Teodoro Mendoza owner of a parcel of land in Bulacan died
intestate and that the only legal heirs of Teodoro are his wife, his 2 children, plaintiff and
defendant and that they executed an Extra-Judicial Settlement of the Estate,
partitioning: to plaintiff & to his wife with defendant waiving her right to her share
and that upon the death of Teodoros wife the wife sold her share to defendant and
that only recently plaintiff discovered that Defendant applied for Free Patent with the
Bureau of Lands for the entire lot to be named under defendants husband.

Defendants defense is that plaintiffs cause of action has been barred by the Statute
of Limitations as the application for title has already been 10 years prior to the
complaint and that the prescriptive period is only 4 years from such date while
petitioner claims that the 4 year period from the discovery of fraud has not yet elapsed.
The trial court said that prescription does not run against co-owners.

ISSUE:

Who has the better title in this case?

RULING:

Petitioner Mendoza has a better title in this case. Co-ownership is not at all involved in
this case this is very clear from the allegations in the complaint which unmistakably
show that whatever co-ownership existed among the heirs of Teodoro Mendoza over
the estate he left behind was terminated when said heirs executed the deed of
extrajudicial settlement. The private ownership of land is not affected by the issuance of
a free patent over the same land because the Public Land Act applies only to lands of
the public domain.

Now, a certificate of title fraudulently secured is null and void ab initio if the fraud
consisted in misrepresenting that the land is part of the public domain. Being null and
void, the free patent granted and the subsequent titles produce no legal effects
whatsoever. A free patent which purports to convey land to which the Government did
not have any title at the time of its issuance does not vest any title in the patentee as
against the true owner. Besides, the petitioners open, public, adverse and exclusive
possession of the portion of the property and its illegal inclusion in the Free Patent and
Original Certificate of Title issued to defendants husband give the former a cause of
action for quieting of title, which is imprescriptible in favor of a person in possession of
the property.