SIBAL v. VALDEZ

Category: Property, Ownership and Its Modifications

SIBAL v. VALDEZ

For the purpose of attachment and execution, and for the purposes of the Chattel Mortgage Law, "ungathered products" have the nature of personal property.

FACTS:

(this case has a lot of confusing facts, just read the original if this digest fails to compress everything) The Deputy Sheriff of the Province of Tarlac, by virtue of a writ of execution issued by the Court of First Instance of Pampanga, attached and sold to the defendant Emiliano J. Valdez the sugar cane planted by the plaintiff and his tenants on seven parcels of land. Included also in those attached were real properties wherein 8mout of the 11 parcels of land, house and camarin which was first acquired by Macondray & Co and then later on bought by Valdez in an auction. First Cause for petitioner: That Within one year from the date of the attachment and sale the plaintiff offered to redeem said sugar cane and tendered to the defendant Valdez the amount sufficient to cover the price paid by the latter, the interest thereon and any assessments or taxes which he may have paid thereon after the purchase, and the interest corresponding thereto and that Valdez refused to accept the money and to return the sugar cane to the plaintiff. Second Cause for petitioner: That Valdez was trying to harvest palay from four out of seven parcels of land. Petitioner filed for preliminary injunction to stop defendant from 1) distributing the lands 2) harvesting and selling the sugar canes, and 3) harvesting and selling the palay. The writ was issued which prevented defendant from planting and harvesting the lands. Defendant later appealed claiming that he was the owner of many of the alleged land thus he also owns the crops of it. The court awarded the defendant 9,439.08 because the petitioner unduly denied the defendant to plant in his land thus preventing him to profit thereto.

ISSUE:

Whether the sugar cane is personal o real property? (The relevance of the issue is with regards to the sugar cane of the Petitioner which came from the land that now belongs to the defendant)

RULING:

It is contended that sugar cane comes under the classification of real property as "ungathered products" in paragraph 2 of article 334 of the Civil Code. Said paragraph 2 of article 334 enumerates as real property the following: Trees, plants, and ungathered products, while they are annexed to the land or form an integral part of any immovable property." That article, however, has received in recent years an interpretation by the Tribunal Supremo de España, which holds that, under certain conditions, growing crops may be considered as personal property.

In some cases "standing crops" may be considered and dealt with as personal property. In the case of Lumber Co. vs. Sheriff and Tax Collector (106 La., 418) the Supreme Court said: "True, by article 465 of the Civil Code it is provided that 'standing crops and the fruits of trees not gathered and trees before they are cut down . . . are considered as part of the land to which they are attached, but the immovability provided for is only one in abstracto and without reference to rights on or to the crop acquired by others than the owners of the property to which the crop is attached. . . . The existence of a right on the growing crop is a mobilization by anticipation, a gathering as it were in advance, rendering the crop movable quoad the right acquired therein. Our jurisprudence recognizes the possible mobilization of the growing crop."

For the purpose of attachment and execution, and for the purposes of the Chattel Mortgage Law, "ungathered products" have the nature of personal property. SC lowered the award for damages to the defendant to 8,900.80 by acknowledging the fact that some of the sugar canes were owned by the petitioner and by reducing the calculated expected yield or profit that defendant would have made if petitioner did not judicially prevent him from planting and harvesting his lands.