SANTIAGO SYJUCO, INC v. CASTRO

SANTIAGO SYJUCO, INC v. CASTRO

G.R. No. 70403; July 7, 1989

Ponente: J. Narvasa

FACTS:

          Back in November 1964, the Lims, borrowed from petitioner Santiago Syjuco, Inc., the sum of P800,000.00. The loan was given on the security of a first mortgage on property registered in the names of said borrowers as owners in common under Transfer Certificates of Title Numbered 75413 and 75415 of the Registry of Deeds of Manila. Thereafter additional loans on the same security were obtained by the Lims from Syjuco, so that as of May 8, 1967, the aggregate of the loans stood at P2,460,000.00, exclusive of interest, and the security had been augmented by bringing into the mortgage other property, also registered as owned pro indiviso by the Lims under two titles: TCT Nos. 75416 and 75418 of the Manila Registry.

       On November 8, 1967, the Lims failed to pay it despite demands therefore; that Syjuco consequently caused extra-judicial proceedings for the foreclosure of the mortgage to be commenced by the Sheriff of Manila; and that the latter scheduled the auction sale of the mortgaged property on December 27, 1968.

The attempt to foreclose triggered off a legal battle that has dragged on for more than twenty years now, fought through five (5) cases in the trial courts,  two (2) in the Court of Appeals,  and three (3) more in the Supreme Court.

        One of the complaints filed by the Lims was filed not in their individual names, but in the name of a partnership of which they themselves were the only partners: "Heirs of Hugo Lim." The complaint advocated the theory that the mortgage which they, together with their mother, had individually constituted (and thereafter amended during the period from 1964 to 1967) over lands standing in their names in the Property Registry as owners pro indiviso, in fact no longer belonged to them at that time, having been earlier deeded over by them to the partnership, "Heirs of Hugo Lim," more precisely, on March 30, 1959, hence, said mortgage was void because executed by them without authority from the partnership.

 ISSUE:

          Whether the mortgage executed by the Lims be attributable to their partnership

HELD:

          Yes, the mortgage executed by the Lims is attributable to their partnership.

The Supreme Court held that the legal fiction of a separate juridical personality and existence will not shield it from the conclusion of having such knowledge which naturally and irresistibly flows from the undenied facts. It would violate all precepts of reason, ordinary experience and common sense to propose that a partnership, as such, cannot be held accountable with knowledge of matters commonly known to all the partners or of acts in which all of the latter, without exception, have taken part, where such matters or acts affect property claimed as its own by said partnership.

The silence and failure of the partnership to impugn said mortgage within a reasonable time, let alone a space of more than seventeen years, brought into play the doctrine of estoppel to preclude any attempt to avoid the mortgage as allegedly unauthorized.

There is no reason to distinguish between the Lims, as individuals, and the partnership itself, since the former constituted the entire membership of the latter. In other words, despite the concealment of the existence of the partnership, for all intents and purposes and consistently with the Lims' own theory, it was that partnership which was the real party in interest in all the actions; it was actually represented in said actions by all the individual members thereof, and consequently, those members' acts, declarations and omissions cannot be deemed to be simply the individual acts of said members, but in fact and in law, those of the partnership.