Limjoco vs. Estate of Fragrante

G.R. No. L-770
April 27, 1948


FACTS:

On May 21, 1946, the Public Service Commission issued a certificate of public convenience to the Intestate Estate of the deceased Pedro Fragante, authorizing the said intestate estate through its Special or Judicial Administrator, appointed by the proper court of competent jurisdiction, to maintain and operate an ice plant with a daily productive capacity of two and one-half (2-1/2) tons in the Municipality of San Juan and to sell the ice produced from the said plant in the Municipalities of San Juan, Mandaluyong, Rizal, and Quezon City; that Fragante’s intestate estate is financially capable of maintaining the proposed service.

Petioner argues that allowing the substitution of the legal representative of the estate of Fragante for the latter as party applicant and afterwards granting the certificate applied for is a contravention of the law.

ISSUE:

Whether the estate of Fragante be extended an artificial judicial personality.

HELD:

The estate of Fragrante must be extended an artificial judicial personality. If Fragrante had lived, in view of the evidence of record, would have obtained from the commission the certificate for which he was applying. The situation has not changed except for his death, and the economic ability of his estate to appropriately and adequately operate and maintain the service of an ice plant was the same that it received from the decedent himself.

It has been the constant doctrine that the estate or the mass of property, rights and assets left by the decedent, directly becomes vested and charged with his rights and obligations which survive after his demise. The reason for this legal fiction, that the estate of the deceased person is considered a "person", as deemed to include artificial or juridical persons, is the avoidance of injustice or prejudice resulting from the impossibility of exercising such legal rights and fulfilling such legal obligations of the decedent as survived after his death unless the fiction is indulged.

The estate of Fragrante should be considered an artificial or juridical person for the purposes of the settlement and distribution of his estate which, include the exercise during the judicial administration of those rights and the fulfillment of those obligations of his estate which survived after his death.

The decedent's rights which by their nature are not extinguished by death go to make up a part and parcel of the assets of his estate for the benefit of the creditors, devisees or legatees, if any, and the heirs of the decedent. It includes those rights and fulfillment of obligation of Fragante which survived after his death like his pending application at the commission.

[READ FULL TEXT]