Case No.

65
G.R. No. 106804
August 12, 2004
NATIONAL POWER CORPORATION, petitioner,
vs.
COURT OF APPEALS and ANTONINO POBRE, respondents.
Topic: Eminent Domain: Taking – Definition and Scope – Requisites of Taking
FACTS:
Antonio Pobre owns a land which he developed into a resort subdivision, beneath which is
thermal mineral water and steam. For one year, Pobre leased to NPC eleven lots from the
approved subdivision plan. To own the land for industrial purposes, NPC filed an expropriation
case against Pobre, during the pendency of which the former dumped waste materials beyond
the site agreed upon by the parties. Then NPC filed its second expropriation case against Pobre
to acquire an additional area of the property.
In his motion to dismiss the complaint, Pobre prayed for just compensation of all the lots affected
by NPC’s actions and for the payment of damages. But NPC itself filed a motion to dismiss the
second expropriation case on the ground that NPC had found an alternative site and that NPC
had already abandoned in 1981 the project within the Property due to Pobre’s opposition. The
trial court ruled that because of the pollution generated by NPC’s geothermal plants NPC had
rendered Pobre’s entire Property useless as a resort-subdivision.
The property has become useful only to NPC. NPC must therefore take Pobre’s entire Property
and pay for it. But NPC insists that it has the right to move for the automatic dismissal of its
complaint, relying on Section 1, Rule 17 of the 1964 Rules of Court (the Rules in effect at the
time).
ISSUE: Whether the value of just compensation for the property was to be computed in 1992
when the complaint was filed instead of in 1978 when the “taking of the property” was done.
RULING:
Yes. The general rule in determining just compensation in eminent domain proceedings is found
in Section 4, Rule 67 of the Revised Rules of Court, which stats that in an Order of Condemnation,
the plaintiff has a lawful right to take the property “…upon payment of just compensation to be
determined as of the date of the filing of the complaint.”
Normally, the time of the taking coincides with the filing of the complaint for expropriation. The
exception to this general rule is where the owner would be given undue incremental advantages
from the use of the expropriated property. Petitioner NPC has not established any proof that the
increase of P1000 was due to increments caused by petitioner’s use of the land.
The present price can be attributed to ordinary inflation and increase in land values from 1978
to 1992. Therefore, petitioner can not invoke the exception to Section 4 of Rule 67. The taking
did not take place in 1978, because petitioner’s entrance in 1978 was not legal. It was without
intent to expropriate nor was it made under a “warrant or color of legal authority.”
Petitioner believed that the property was owned by the City of Marawi, and when private
respondent claimed ownership of the land in 1979, petitioner flatly refused the claim and thought
that the city had already conferred upon it rights over the property. After a decade of beneficial
use was only when petitioner recognized private respondent as the private owner and negotiated
for a voluntary purchase of the property.
The acts of petitioner do not constitute the intent of expropriation nor the exercise of eminent
domain as contemplated by law. It was only in 1992 when private respondent filed a civil case
against petitioner that it decided to file its own complaint for eminent domain.