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8 Presbitero Vs Fernandez

The document discusses a case regarding whether sugar quotas are considered real or personal property. It summarizes that sugar quotas are deemed improvements attached to the land based on express provisions in relevant laws. As such, sugar quotas are considered inseparable from the land and real property, like servitudes and other real rights over immovable property. Therefore, for the levy on Presbitero's sugar quotas to be valid, the notice of garnishment should have been registered with the Registry of Deeds, as is required for real property. Since this was not done, the levy was invalid.

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893 views2 pages

8 Presbitero Vs Fernandez

The document discusses a case regarding whether sugar quotas are considered real or personal property. It summarizes that sugar quotas are deemed improvements attached to the land based on express provisions in relevant laws. As such, sugar quotas are considered inseparable from the land and real property, like servitudes and other real rights over immovable property. Therefore, for the levy on Presbitero's sugar quotas to be valid, the notice of garnishment should have been registered with the Registry of Deeds, as is required for real property. Since this was not done, the levy was invalid.

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DenDenciio Barćelona
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8.

RICARDO PRESBITERO vs, FERNANDEZ
Facts: Presbitero was ordered by the lower court to execute a deed of reconveyance of lot 788 and 7
hectare portion of Lot 608, or, upon failure to do so, to pay the value of each properties. Nava's counsel
still tried to settle this case with Presbitero, out of court (demand letter) but to no avail. Thereafter, the
sheriff levied upon and garnished the sugar quotas allotted to the plantation and adhered to the Ma-
ao Mill District and registered in the name of Presbitero as the original plantation owner, furnishing
copies of the writ of execution and the notice of garnishment to the manager of the Ma-ao Sugar Central
Company, Bago, Negros Occidental, and the Sugar Quota Administration at Bacolod City, but without
presenting for registration copies thereof to the Register of Deeds. The court then ordered Presbitero
to segregate the portion of Lot 608 pertaining to Nava from the mass of properties belonging to the
defendant within a period to expire on August 1960, and to effect the final conveyance of Lot 608 and Lot
788. Presbitero did not meet his obligations to pay the value of the 14 hectares at the rate given or to
deliver the clean titles of the lots, defendant deliver COT covering lot 788 but not the title covering lot
608 because of an existing encumbrance in favor of the Phil Nat’l Bank. Apparently the auction sale was
scheduled on Oct 22, 1960. Esperidion Presbitero died after two days. Ricardo Presbitero, the estate
administrator, then petitioned that the sheriff desist in holding the auction sale on the ground that the  levy
on the sugar quotas was invalid because the notice thereof was not registered with the Registry of
Deeds, as for real property, and that the writs, being for sums of money, are unenforceable since
Esperidion Presbitero died on October 22, 1960, and, therefore, could only be enforced as a money claim
against his estate.
Issue: WON the sugar quotas are real (immovable) or personal properties.
Held:  They are real properties. Sec 9. Sugar Limitation Law (Act 4166, as amended) provides that
“The allotment corresponding to each piece of land under the provisions of this Act shall be deemed to be
an improvement attaching to the land entitled thereto ....”

and Sec. 4, Republic Act No. 1825 similarly provides that “The production allowance or quotas
corresponding to each piece of land under the provisions of this Act shall be deemed to be an
improvement attaching to the land entitled thereto ....”

and Executive Order No. 873 defines "plantation" as follows:

(a) The term 'plantation' means any specific area of land under sole or undivided ownership to
which is attached an allotment of centrifugal sugar.

Thus, under express provisions of law, the sugar quota allocations are accessories to land, and
cannot have independent existence away from a plantation, although the latter may vary. SC held in
the case of Abelarde vs. Lopez, 74 Phil. 344, that even if a contract of sale of haciendas omitted "the right,
title, interest, participation, action (and) rent" which the grantors had or might have in relation to the
parcels of land sold, the sale would include the quotas, it being provided in Section 9, Act 4166, that the
allotment is deemed an improvement attached to the land, and that at the time the contract of sale was
signed the land devoted to sugar were practically of no use without the sugar allotment.

As an improvement attached to land, by express provision of law, though not physically so united,
the sugar quotas are inseparable therefrom, just like servitudes and other real rights over an
immovable. Article 415 of the Civil Code, in enumerating what are immovable properties, names —
10. Contracts for public works, and servitudes and other real rights over immovable property.
(Emphasis supplied)

It is by law, therefore, that these properties are immovable or real, Article 416 of the Civil Code being
made to apply only when the thing (res) sought to be classified is not included in Article 415.

The fact that the Philippine Trade Act of 1946 (U.S. Public Law 371-79th Congress) allows transfers of
sugar quotas does not militate against their immovability. Neither does the fact that the Sugar Quota
Office does not require registration of sales of quotas with the Register of Deeds for their validity, nor the
fact that allocation of unrefined sugar quotas is not made among lands planted to sugarcane but among
"the sugar producing mills and plantation OWNERS", since the lease or sale of quotas
are voluntary transactions, the regime of which, is not necessarily identical to involuntary transfers or
levies; and there cannot be a sugar plantation owner without land to which the quota is attached; and there
can exist no quota without there being first a corresponding plantation.

Since the levy is invalid for non-compliance with law, the levy amount to no levy at all.

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