Land Registration Authority asks Quezon City court to cancel spurious titles

In April, the Land Registration Authority (LRA) asked a Quezon City Regional Trial Court to cancel two of seven transfer certificate of titles (TCTs) belonging to Wilfredo Torres,  which the LRA claimed to be spurious.

A civil complaint, dated April 18 and filed by the LRA through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), named Torres, Manuel Aliño and the Quezon City register of deeds as defendants.

The two titles in question are TCT Nos. 117147 and 117143 in Aliño’s name, which are also among the land titles included in Torres’s 2000 petition for reconstitution.

Torres filed a petition for reconstitution for the titles, claiming these were burned in a fire at the Quezon City Hall in 1988.

The LRA had issued a consolidated report on the TCTs in question, which recommended the cancellation of the titles.

There was also a categorical declaration that the “titles were irregularly issued and that when plotted on the Municipal Index Sheet, the said titles overlapped and were previously covered by several TCTs issued by the register of deeds.”

The case is currently pending before Judge Luisito Cortez of Regional Trial Court Branch 84.

The LRA, through the OSG, asked the court to declare the two TCTs and their derivative titles, if any, as void.

The LRA also asked the court to order Aliño, Torres and their heirs to surrender their owners’ copy of the two TCTs and derivative titles to the Register of Deeds in Quezon City.

Torres, however, denied such claims, in a pleading submitted to the court on Aug. 26.

In a motion to dismiss, Torres, through his lawyer Felix Carao Jr. and Ronald Oñate, asked the court to dismiss the LRA’s civil complaint on grounds of “prior judgment.”

“Under the rules, a compliant must be dismissed on the ground that the cause of action is barred by a prior judgment. The rationale of such rule is that no person should be twice vexed by the same claim and that in the interest of the state that there be an end to litigation.”

He pointed out that the issue of whether the TCTs were fake was already involved in the reconstitution case being handled by Judge Tita Villordon of RTC Branch 224.

The 75-year-old Torres noted that Villordon did not give weight to the LRA’s report on the two allegedly spurious titles.