EN BANC
MARTIN
BALATBAT,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
G.
R.
No. 1096
May
5,
1903
-versus-
VALENTIN
TANJUTCO,
Defendant-Appellant.
D E C I S I
O N
WILLARD, J:
Section 133 of the Code
of Civil Procedure requires the Judges of the Courts of First Instance
to file Decisions in writing, in which shall be stated the facts found
by them to be true. We have held that if these facts stated in the
Decision,
and those admitted by the pleadings, are not, as a matter of law,
sufficient
to support the judgment, it must be reversed. [Thunga Chui vs. Que
Bentec,
September 5, 1902;
[1]
Martinez vs. Martinez, January 23, 1903.
[2]]
The complaint was
amended,
alleged that the plaintiff and his cotenants in 1898 or 1899 sold the
land
in question to the defendant, with an agreement that they might redeem
it, and asked that they be allowed to redeem it by paying 400 Pesos.
The defendant denied
all the allegations of the complaint.
The only facts found
by the Court are:
1.
That the defendant
paid Doña Inocencia Soco, as a co-owner With the plaintiff of
the
land in controversy, 10 Pesos. Giving to the custom of the province
referred
to in the judgment, and relied upon by the plaintiff in his brief in
this
Court, all possible force, this evidence has no tendency to show that
400
Pesos was the price at which the land could be redeemed by the terms of
the alleged agreement;
2. That Doña
Simona Espinosa formerly was the owner of the land; that she had sold
it,
with an agreement of repurchase, to Prudencio Tanjutco, a brother of
the
defendant; that she and her co-owners, the plaintiff and others, had
redeemed
it and had been in possession of it for four years.
This in no way, tends
to prove that after such redemption, they again sold it to the
defendant
with a right to repurchase it for 400 Pesos;
3. That the defendant
had been called upon to produce the writing which contained the
agreement
relied upon, and had refused to produce it.
The facts herein before
set out, being the only ones found by the court, do not tend to prove
that
and such writing ever existed. A failure to comply with this request
could
not take the place of a finding that such a contract existed, nor a
finding
as to its contents.
For these reasons a
new trial will have to be granted.
In view thereof, We
will add that the claim of res adjudicata made by the defendant
cannot be supported. Passing the question of identity of parties and
other
questions, the identity of subject-matter between the former case and
the
present one was not established. In the complaint in the first case the
only description of the land was that it was in the Barrio of San
Agustin.
That the defendant's suggestion in that case as to the proper
description
was not accepted by the plaintiff is proved by the judgment, in which
it
is said that the plaintiff neither in hiss complaint nor during the
trial
had described the land which he claimed the right to redeem.
The judgment of the
Court below is reversed and a new trial granted, With costs of this
instance
against the appellee.
Arellano, C.J.,
Cooper, Mapa and Ladd, JJ., concur.
Torres and
McDonough, JJ., did not sit in this case.
_____________________________
Endnotes:
[1]
1 Phil. Rep. 356.
[2]
1
Phil.
Rep., 647. |