All these allegations are specific matters to be resolved by this Court in determining the overriding issue of the case at bar: whether the Court of Appeals correctly granted Candice’s Petition for Certiorari and Prohibition on its finding that the RTC committed grave abuse of discretion in issuing its March 2, 2006 and April 7, 2006 Orders. In other words, the main issue to be determined by this Court is whether or not there was grave abuse of discretion in the RTC’s order to reinstate the notice of levy on attachment in TCT No. R-22522. “Grave abuse of discretion” signifies “such capricious and whimsical exercise of judgment that is equivalent to lack of jurisdiction. The abuse of discretion must be grave as where the power is exercised in an arbitrary or despotic manner by reason of passion or personal hostility, and must be so patent and gross as to amount to an evasion of positive duty or to a virtual refusal to perform the duty enjoined by or to act all in contemplation of law.”[21]
The Court of Appeals, in considering the date of entry in the day book of the Registry of Deeds as controlling over the presentation of the entries in TCT No. R-17571, relied on Section 56 of Presidential Decree No. 1529 which provides that:
SEC. 56. Primary Entry Book; fees; certified copies. – Each Register of Deeds shall keep a primary entry book in which, upon payment of the entry fee, he shall enter, in the order of their reception, all instruments including copies of writs and processes filed with him relating to registered land. He shall, as a preliminary process in registration, note in such book the date, hour and minute of reception of all instruments, in the order in which they were received. They shall be regarded as registered from the time so noted, and the memorandum of each instrument, when made on the certificate of title to which it refers, shall bear the same date: Provided, that the national government as well as the provincial and city governments shall be exempt from the payment of such fees in advance in order to be entitled to entry and registration. (Emphasis supplied.)
The consequence of the highlighted portion of the above section is two-fold: (1) in determining the date in which an instrument is considered registered, the reckoning point is the time of the reception of such instrument as noted in the Primary Entry Book; and (2) when the memorandum of the instrument is later made on the certificate of title to which it refers, such memorandum shall bear the same date as that of the reception of the instrument as noted in the Primary Entry Book. Pursuant to the second consequence stated above, the Court of Appeals held that Atty. Rutaquio correctly placed the date of entry in the Primary Entry Book as the date of the memorandum of the registration of the deed of sale in TCT No. R-17571.
As regards the first consequence, this Court has applied the same in several cases. Thus, in the old cases of Levin v. Bass,[22] Potenciano v. Dineros,[23] and Development Bank of the Philippines v. Acting Register of Deeds of Nueva Ecija,[24] as well as in the fairly recent cases of Autocorp Group v. Court of Appeals,[25] Armed Forces and Police Mutual Benefit Association, Inc. v. Santiago,[26] and National Housing Authority v. Basa, Jr.,[27] we upheld the entry of instruments in the Primary Entry Book to be equivalent to registration despite even the failure to annotate said instruments in the corresponding certificates of title.
Based on this alone, it appears that the RTC was in error when it considered the registration of the Absolute Deed of Sale on June 16, 2004 inferior to the registration of the Notice of Levy on Attachment on June 17, 2004 on the ground that the Attachment was annotated on TCT No. R-17571 earlier than the Deed of Sale. As discussed in the above-mentioned cases, the annotation in the certificate of title is not determinative of the effectivity of the registration of the subject instrument.
However, a close reading of the above-mentioned cases reveals that for the entry of instruments in the Primary Entry Book to be equivalent to registration, certain requirements have to be met. Thus, we held in Levin that:
Do the entry in the day book of a deed of sale which was presented and filed together with the owner's duplicate certificate of title with the office of the Registrar of Deeds and full payment of registration fees constitute a complete act of registration which operates to convey and affect the land? In voluntary registration, such as a sale, mortgage, lease and the like, if the owner's duplicate certificate be not surrendered and presented or if no payment of registration fees be made within 15 days, entry in the day book of the deed of sale does not operate to convey and affect the land sold. x x x.[28]
Levin, which was decided in 1952, applied Section 56 of the Land Registration Act[29] which provides:
Sec. 56. Each register of deeds shall keep an entry book in which, upon payment of the filing fee, he shall enter in the order of their reception all deeds and other voluntary instruments, and all copies of writs or other process filed with him relating to registered land. He shall note in such book the year, month, day, hour, and minute of reception of all instruments in the order in which they were received. They shall be regarded as registered from the time so noted, and the memorandum of each instrument when made on the certificate of title to which it refers shall bear the same date; Provided, however, That no registration, annotation, or memorandum on a certificate of title shall be made unless the fees prescribed therefor by this Act are paid within fifteen days' time after the date of the registration of the deed, instrument, order or document in the entry book or day book, and in case said fee is not paid within the time above mentioned, such entry shall be null and void: Provided further, That the Insular Government and the provincial and municipal governments need not pay such fees in advance in order to be entitled to entry or registration. (Emphasis supplied.)
This provision is the precursor of the aforequoted Section 56 of Presidential Decree No. 1529, which seems to have dispensed with the provision nullifying the registration ifthe required fees are not paid:
SEC. 56. Primary Entry Book; fees; certified copies. – Each Register of Deeds shall keep a primary entry book in which, upon payment of the entry fee, he shall enter, in the order of their reception, all instruments including copies of writs and processes filed with him relating to registered land. He shall, as a preliminary process in registration, note in such book the date, hour and minute of reception of all instruments, in the order in which they were received. They shall be regarded as registered from the time so noted, and the memorandum of each instrument, when made on the certificate of title to which it refers, shall bear the same date: Provided, that the national government as well as the provincial and city governments shall be exempt from the payment of such fees in advance in order to be entitled to entry and registration.
In Development Bank of the Philippines v. Acting Register of Deeds of Nueva Ecija,[30] this Court applied the provisions of Presidential Decree No. 1529 and modified the doctrine as follows:
Current doctrine thus seems to be that entry alone produces the effect of registration, whether the transaction entered is a voluntary or an involuntary one, so long as the registrant has complied with all that is required of him for purposes of entry and annotation, and nothing more remains to be done but a duty incumbent solely on the register of deeds.[31]
This pronouncement, which was reiterated in National Housing Authority v. Basa, Jr.,[32] shows that for the entry to be considered to have the effect of registration, there is still a need to comply with all that is required for entry and registration, including the payment of the prescribed fees. Thus, in Autocorp Group v. Court of Appeals,[33] this Court compared the date when the required fees were paid with the therein assailed writ of preliminary injunction:
Petitioners contend that payment of the entry fee is a condition sine qua non before any valid entry can be made in the primary entry book. Allegedly, the Court of Appeals resorted to judicial legislation when it held that the subsequent payment of the entry fee was curative and a substantial compliance with the law. Petitioners claim that the ruling inDBP vs. Acting Register of Deeds of Nueva Ecija does not apply to this case. As there was no valid registration, petitioners conclude that the order of the trial court issuing a writ of preliminary injunction was proper, considering the irregularities present in the conduct of the extrajudicial foreclosure x x x.
We find the petition bereft of merit.
First. The objection as to the payment of the requisite fees is unavailing. There is no question that the fees were paid, albeit belatedly. Respondent bank presented the certificate of sale to the Office of the Register of Deeds of Cebu City for registration onJanuary 21, 1999 at 4:30 p.m. As the cashier had already left, the Office could not receive the payment for entry and registration fees, but still, the certificate of sale was entered in the primary entry book. The following day, respondent bank paid the requisite entry and registration fees. Given the peculiar facts of the case, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the payment of respondent bank must be deemed to be substantial compliance with the law; and, the entry of the instrument the day before, should not be invalidated. In any case, even if we consider the entry to have been made on January 22, the important fact is that the entry in the primary entry book was done prior to the issuance of the writ of injunction [on February 15, 1999; TRO issued on January 25, 1999] by the trial court.[34] (Emphases supplied.)
Records in the case at bar reveal that as of June 25, 2004, the date of the letter of Atty. Santos seeking the opinion of the LRA as regards the registration of the Deed of Sale and the Notice of Levy on Attachment, the required registration fees for the Deed of Sale has not yet been paid:
25 June 2004
[received by the LRA: July 01, 2004]
HON. BENEDICTO B. ULEP
Administrator
This Authority
Sir:
This has reference to the TCT No. R-17571/T-87 registered under the name of LBB Construction and Development Corporation relative to the Deed of Absolute Sale with Entry No. 30549, which was sought to be registered on 16 June 2004 at 11:20 a.m. (a photocopy of which is hereto attached as Annex “A”).
However, on 17 June 2004 at 11:45 a.m. a Notice of Levy on Attachment (a photocopy of which is hereto attached as Annex “B”) with Entry No. 30590 was filed and annotated against TCT No. R-17571/T-87.
In view of the foregoing, we are now in a quandary as to what proper steps should be taken. It should be noted further that the required registration fees of the abovementioned sale was not paid the reason for which the same was not immediately acted upon by the undersigned.[35]
Since there was still no compliance of “all that is required x x x for purposes of entry and annotation”[36] of the Deed of Sale as of June 25, 2004, we are constrained to rule that the registration of the Notice of Levy on Attachment on June 17, 2004 should take precedence over the former. Considering that the Notice of Levy on Attachment was deemed registered earlier than the Deed of Sale, the TCT issued pursuant to the latter should contain the annotation of the Attachment.
In view of the foregoing, we find that the RTC was, in fact, acting properly when it ordered the reinstatement of the Notice of Levy on Attachment in TCT No. R-22522. Since the RTC cannot be considered as to have acted in grave abuse of its discretion in issuing such Order, the Petition for Certiorari assailing the same should have been dismissed.
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