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Property Case Digest
Property Case Digest
Further, in the case of Cuayong vs. Benedicto, (37 Phil., 781) where the point
in issue was whether or not vested rights in a right of way can be acquired
through user from time immemorial, the Court held that no discontinuous
easement could be acquired by prescription in any event.
plant nursery business through sheer hard work flourished and with that, it
became more and more difficult for petitioner to haul the plants and garden
soil to and from the nursery and the highway with the use of pushcarts. In
January, 1984, petitioner was able to buy an owner-type jeep which he could
use for transporting his plants. However, that jeep could not pass through
the roadpath and so he approached the servient estate owners and
requested that they sell to him one and one-half (1 1/2) meters of their
property to be added to the existing pathway so as to allow passage for his
jeepney. The request was turned down by the two widows and further
attempts at negotiation proved futile.
Petitioner then instituted an action before the Regional Trial Court of
Batangas, to seek the issuance of a writ of easement of a right of way over
an additional width of at least two (2) meters over the De Saguns' 405square-meter parcel of land. During the trial, the attention of the lower court
was called to the existence of another exit to the highway, only eighty (80)
meters away from the dominant estate, hence, dismissing petitioner's
complaint.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the trial court and
rejected petitioner's claim for an additional easement.
ISSUE: Whether or not petitioner is entitled to a widening of an already
existing easement of right-of-way.
HELD: The Court finds that petitioner has sufficiently established his claim for
an additional easement of right of way, holding that where a private property
has no access to a public road, it has the right of easement over adjacent
servient estates as a matter of law.
Article 651 of the Civil Code provides that "(t)he width of the easement of
right of way shall be that which is sufficient for the needs of the dominant
estate, and may accordingly be changed from time to time." This is taken to
mean that under the law, it is the needs of the dominant property which
ultimately determine the width of the passage. And these needs may vary
from time to time.
When petitioner started out as a plant nursery operator, he and his family
could easily make do with a few pushcarts to tow the plants to the national
highway. But the business grew and with it the need for the use of modern
means of conveyance or transport. Manual hauling of plants and garden soil
easement of light and view arising from a verbal prohibition to obstruct such
view and light, to petitioner's predecessor-in-interest as owner of the
adjoining lot, both of which lots being covered by Torrens titles.
HELD: Inasmuch as the alleged prohibition having been avowedly made in
1913 or 1914, before the present Civil Code took effect, the applicable legal
provision is Article 538 of the Spanish Civil Code which provides that
negative easements are acquired, from the day on which the owner of the
dominant estate has, by a formal act, forbidden the owner of the servient
estate to perform any act which would be lawful without the easement.
The law requires not any form of prohibition, but exacts, in a parenthetical
expression, for emphasis, the doing not only of a specific, particular act, but
a formal act. The phrase "formal act" would require not merely any writing,
but one executed in due form and/or with solemnity. That this is the
intendment of the law although not expressed in exact language is the
reason for the clarification made in Article 621 of the new Civil Code which
specifically requires the prohibition to be in "an instrument acknowledged
before a notary public".
Easements are in the nature of an encumbrance on the servient estate. They
constitute a limitation of the dominical right of the owner of the subjected
property. Hence, they can be acquired only by title and by prescription, in the
case of positive easement, only as a result of some sort of invasion, apparent
and continuous, of the servient estate. By the same token, negative
easements can not be acquired by less formal means. Hence, the
requirement that the prohibition (the equivalent of the act of invasion)
should be by "a formal act", "an instrument acknowledged before a notary
public."
Conceding arguendo that such an easement has been acquired by
prescription which, counting the twenty (20) years from 1913 or 1914, would
have already ripened by 1937, it had been cut off or extinguished by the
registration of the servient estate under the Torrens System without the
easement being annotated on the corresponding certificate of title, pursuant
to Section 39 of the Land Registration Act.
FACTS: The wall of the house of defendant Oscar Sternberg, have four
windows and a gallery (upper story), two windows, one door and an opening
with wooden lattice (lower story), which is 1 meter and 36 centimeters (1.36
m.) distant from the dividing line between the lot on which said building
stands and the lot of the plaintiff. The building of the defendant has stood
with the identical openings before mentioned, since the year 1905. The
defendant claims to have a direct view over plaintiff's lot, and that the
windows and the gallery of plaintiff's edifice have direct views on defendant's
lot. In the Torrens titles which both parties have to their respective buildings,
there does not appear any easement of view in plaintiff's title, nor any right
to easement in defendant's.
The plaintiff then filed an action before the court, to compel the defendant to
close the windows in the wall of his house adjacent to the formers property,
because the wall of defendant's house is less than 2 meters from the division
line. The defendant pleads prescription as his defense. The lower court
agreed with the plaintiff's contention and ordered the windows of the
defendant's house to be closed. Hence, this appeal.
ISSUE: Whether or not a right of action to enforce article 582 of the Civil
Code may be lost by failure to prosecute within the prescriptive period fixed
by the Code of Civil Procedure.
HELD: The Court held that the plaintiff right of action under Article 582 of the
Civil Code accrued in 1905 when the windows in defendant's house were
opened, and that, in accordance with Chapter III of the Code of Civil
Procedure, his action has prescribed. Article 582 of the Civil Code provides:
"No windows or balconies or other similar projections which directly overlook
the adjoining property may be opened or built without leaving a distance of
not less than 2 meters between the wall in which they are built and such
adjoining property.
It should first be noted that the defendant in this case has never prohibited
the plaintiff from building on his, the plaintiff's, own land, any wall that he
may desire to construct. Further, it should be noted that the offending edifice
of the defendant was constructed in 1905. This was the year when the
defendant violated the law. This was the date when the cause of action
accrued. Nevertheless, the windows complained of were permitted to be
open for thirteen years without protest. The plaintiff must, consequently, by
reason of his own laches, be considered to have waived any right which he
may have had to compel the windows to be closed. The argument of plaintiff
that it was only in 1917, when he bought the land in question, that the
statute of limitations began to run, is not convincing, for the general rule is,
that once the statute begins to run, it never stops, and the transfer of the
cause of action does not have the effect of suspending its operation.
HIDALGO ENTERPRISES, INC. vs. GUILLERMO BALANDAN, ET AL.
G.R. No. L-3422; June 13, 1952
FACTS: Petitioner Hidalgo Enterprises, Inc. was the owner of an ice-plant
factory in the City of San Pablo, Laguna, in whose premises were installed
two tanks full of water, nine feet deep, for cooling purposes of its engine.
While the factory compound was surrounded with fence, the tanks
themselves were not provided with any kind of fence or top covers. The
edges of the tanks were barely a foot high from the surface of the ground.
Through the wide gate entrance, which is continually open, motor vehicles
hauling ice and persons buying said commodity passed, and any one could
easily enter the said factory, as he pleased. There was no guard assigned on
the gate.
At about noon of April 16, 1948, plaintiff's son, Mario Balandan, a boy barely
8 years old, while playing with and in company of other boys of his age
entered the factory premises through the gate, to take a bath in one of said
tanks; and while thus bathing, Mario sank to the bottom of the tank, only to
be fished out later, already a cadaver, having been died of "asphyxia
secondary to drowning."
The Court of Appeals, and the Court of First Instance of Laguna, took the
view that the petitioner maintained an attractive nuisance (the tanks), and
neglected to adopt the necessary precautions to avoid accidents to persons
entering its premises. It applied the doctrine of attractive nuisance, stated as
follows: One who maintains on his premises dangerous instrumentalities or
appliances of a character likely to attract children in play, and who fails to
exercise ordinary care to prevent children from playing therewith or resorting
thereto, is liable to a child of tender years who is injured thereby, even if the
child is technically a trespasser in the premises.
The principal reason for the doctrine is that the condition or appliance in
question although its danger is apparent to those of age, is so enticing or
alluring to children of tender years as to induce them to approach, get on or