Gonzales vs Court of Appeals

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Gonzales vs Court of Appeals
G.R. No. 36213
June 29, 1989

Facts:

The petitioners leased a lot in the subdivision on which they built their house, and, by tolerance of the subdivision owner, they cultivated some vacant adjoining lots. The Court of Agrarian Relations, as well as the Court of Appeals, ruled that "the plaintiffs are not de jure agricultural tenants."

On October 26, 1988, Lucia A. Sison filed a motion to be substituted in lieu of the private respondents Andres Agcaoile (who died on May 20, 1976) and Leonora Agcaoile (who died on March 22, 1979) as she inherited, and is now the registered owner of, nine (9) unsold lots in the subdivision covered.

On February 22, 1989, this Court granted her motion. The facts of this case are not disputed and are recited in the appealed decision dated December 6, 1972 of the Court of Appeals.

Issue:

W/N an agricultural tenancy relationship can be created over land embraced in an approved residential subdivision.

Held:

There is no merit in the petitioners' argument that inasmuch as residential and commercial lots may be considered "agricultural" (Krivenko vs. Register of Deeds, 79 Phil. 461) an agricultural tenancy can be established on land in a residential subdivision. The Krivenko decision interpreting the constitutional prohibition against transferring private agricultural land to individuals, corporations, or associations not qualified to acquire or hold lands of the public domain, save in the case of hereditary succession (Art. XIII Sec. 5, 1935 Constitution; later Art. XIV, Sec. 14, 1973 Constitution; Art. XII, Sec. 7, 1987 Constitution) has nothing to do with agricultural tenancy. An agricultural leasehold cannot be established on land which has ceased to be devoted to cultivation or farming because of its conversion into a residential subdivision.

Petitioners may not invoke Section 36(l) of Republic Act No. 3844 which provides that "when the lessor-owner fails to substantially carry out the conversion of his agricultural land into a subdivision within one year after the dispossession of the lessee, the lessee shall be entitled to reinstatement and damages," for the petitioners were not agricultural lessees or tenants of the land before its conversion into a residential subdivision in 1955. Not having been dispossessed by the conversion of the land into a residential subdivision, they may not claim a right to reinstatement.

On the other hand, the petitioners' tactic of entering the subdivision as lessee of a homelot and thereafter cultivating some unsold lots ostensibly for temporary use as a home garden, but covertly for the purpose of later claiming the land as "tenanted" farm lots, recalls the fable of the camel that sought shelter inside its master's tent during a storm, and once inside, kicked its master out of the tent. Here, the private respondents' tolerance of the petitioners' supposedly temporary use of some vacant lots in the subdivision was seized by the latter as a weapon to deprive the respondents of their land.

WHEREFORE, finding no reversible error in the decision of the Court of Appeals, We deny the petition for review for lack of merit.