WILMON AUTO SUPPLY CORP. v CA- Possession de Jure, Possession de Facto

It has also been decided in a long line of cases that cases wherein ownership (possession de jure) is the issue does not a bar or suspend ejectment cases (which tackles possession de facto.)

FACTS:

Petitioners were lessees of a commercial building and bodegas owned in common by Lucy A. Solinap, Fr. Jerry R. Locsin, Lourdes C Locsin, Manuel C. Locsin and Ester L. Jarantilla. In their lease contract, there was a “reservation of right” clause stating that the lessor reserves the rights to sell, mortgage, hypothecate or encumber the property so long as it requires the purchase or mortgage creditors to respect the terms of the lease contract; provided further that lessee shall be duly informed about lessor’s plan to sell the property (herein referred to as “leasehold rights”). After the expiration of the lease contract, the lessors sold the property to respondent Star Group Resources and Development Inc.

Thereafter, the respondent filed against the petitioner, who stayed despite the expiration of their lease contract, for unlawful detainer. The lessees refused to concede and even impugned the right of the respondent to eject them. Petitioners filed a case in the RTC to enforce their leasehold and pre-emptive rights, which include the declaration of the sale null and void, their right of redemption, and to recover their two-month deposits against the respondent in the dispute premises. Subsequently they filed a motion to dismiss the ejectment case because of the case they filed with RTC.

ISSUE:

Whether or not an action of unlawful detainer filed in the MTC against a lessee grounded on the expiration of the latter’s lease should be suspended by an action filed in the RTC by the defendant lesse on the claim that he is entitled to a right of preemption of the premises in question and wishes to have said right judicially enforced?

RULING:

NO. An ejectment suit cannot be suspended by an action filed in the RTC based on tenant’s claim that his right of preemption was violated. The underlying reasons for the this were that the actions in the RTC did not involve physical or de facto possession, and on not a few occasions, that the case in the RTC was merely a ploy to delay disposition of the ejectment proceeding, or that the issues presented in the former could quite as easily be set up as defenses in the ejectment action and there resolved
It has also been decided in a long line of cases that cases wherein ownership (possession de jure) is the issue does not a bar or suspend ejectment cases (which tackles possession de facto.)
The Court however stressed that when in forcible entry and unlawful detainer cases, “the defendant raises the question of ownership in his pleadings and the question of possession cannot be resolved without deciding the issue of ownership.” The MTC nevertheless have the undoubted competence to resolve “the issue of ownership x x only to determine the issue of possession”