HEIGHTENED SECURITY. Residents of Sadel, a small community in Sanville subdivision, put up a new gate and guard post. LYN RILLON
Residents of eight middle-class subdivisions in Quezon City have asked the Supreme Court to punish a Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge who had awarded a 24-hectare prime property to a suspected leader of a “professional squatting syndicate.”
More than 3,000 people are in danger of losing their homes after Judge Tita Marilyn Payoyo-Villordon of the Quezon City RTC Branch 224 granted a writ of possession on the property to Wilfredo S. Torres on May 26.
Several schools in the area and a chapel inside the popular wedding venue Fernwood Gardens are also facing eviction if the court issues them a notice to vacate.
To avoid eviction from their homes, the residents of Barangay (village) Culiat urged the high tribunal to penalize Villordon “to the fullest extent of the law” for her “manifest bias and partiality” in favor of Torres.
In an administrative complaint, lawyer Walter Young accused Villordon of gross ignorance of the law, gross negligence and dereliction of judicial functions and “for knowingly rendering an unjust judgment.”
“This case really boggles our mind. How could one person claim ownership over a vast and very expensive property in the middle of a city? The judge should have realized that,” Young told the Inquirer.
Humiliation, anguish
Young, who represents the subdivision residents and Kanlaon Construction Enterprise Co., asked the high court to order Villordon to pay him and other homeowners P4 million in exemplary and moral damages for the “mental anguish, sleepless nights, social humiliation and besmirched reputation” they suffered because of her ruling.
“Judge Villordon knowingly rendered an unjust judgment by her act of reviving the (June 3, 1996) decision and despicably seeing through its execution with vigorous persistence,” Young said in an affidavit, referring to a ruling that then Judge Emilio Leachon issued in favor of Torres.
Young said Villordon’s decision would affect at least 400 homeowners of K-Ville Townhomes Homeowners’ Association, Sanvilles 1, 2, 3 and 4, Sadel Court, Metro Heights Subdivision and K Square who had been the “registered owners” of their respective properties.
A nearby colony of informal settlers composed of more than 1,500 individuals also faces eviction, he said.
Start of dispute
Young said the ownership dispute started on Oct. 31, 1990, when Torres filed a civil suit against the couple Manuel and Rosalina Aliño, the supposed registered owners of the property.
In his complaint, Torres claimed that his late mother, Dominga Roxas Sumulong, was the original owner of the land before she agreed to sell it to the Aliños on March 4, 1967, for P4.3 million.
The property supposedly encompassed some 43.1 hectares of private lands on Visayas Avenue.
Torres said he decided to sue the Aliños after he found out that the couple was able to register the property in their name despite their failure to pay his mother in full.
After six years, then Judge Leachon said the Aliños were in default and granted Torres’ petition to forfeit the supposed sale of the property in his favor.
Prescriptive period
Since Leachon’s 1996 ruling became final and executory on Sept. 18, 1997, Young said Torres had forfeited his chance to enforce the order as the 10-year prescriptive period in securing a writ of possession expired in 2007.
But to their surprise, Villordon directed the Quezon City assessor’s office “under pain of contempt” on May 26 to immediately issue a transfer of tax declaration for the new transfer certificate of title (TCT) in Torres’ name.
The order came after Torres petitioned the court in November 2010 to revive Leachon’s favorable decision.
Without annotation
Young said Villordon also ordered the city assessor to make the document “without annotation,” which he said proved her “manifest bias and partiality.”
By issuing the document without the usual annotations, he said the previous owners who had secured their own tax declarations would not be included in the new document to be processed.
“The foregoing is indeed highly irregular and one which surely was motivated by fraud and deceit,” Young said. “Clearly, this is deceit being peddled and foisted unto prospective buyers of realties with the aid and assistance of … Judge Villordon.”
On July 31, Young and fellow homeowners sent a letter to the City Assessor’s Office to protest Villordon’s order.
In their letter, the residents said their properties should not be included in the new tax declaration because they were not indicted in the case as respondents and that their properties were not registered in the name of the Aliño couple.
“There can be no execution of judgment against persons to whom the court has not acquired jurisdiction,” they argued.
The residents then sought the help of Administrator Eulalio Diaz of the Land Registration Authority (LRA), Quezon City Register of Deeds Elbert Quilala and City Assessor Jose Castro.
Deeds exec arrested
At a meeting on August 4, Young said the residents learned that Villordon had ordered Quilala’s arrest in April after the latter did not follow the judge’s ruling to immediately issue new TCTs in Torres’ name.
After he was arrested, Quilala was taken to Camp Karingal and “was forced to issue the new TCTs under duress,” Young said.
Young said Castro disclosed during the meeting that a court sheriff and several policemen had nearly arrested him from his office when he refused to release new tax declarations for Torres.
Young said a check made by Castro’s office showed that “there is no evidence” that either Torres’ late mother or the Aliños were once the registered owner of the contested property.
“(I)t is strange as to why … Judge Villordon was so inordinately eager with the seeming help and aid of government functionaries, to wreak havoc [on] and put to naught the cardinal principle of the indefeasibility of the Torres title system,” he said.
Young surmised that the Aliños could have colluded with Torres to help him take over the property and that Villordon could have been “wittingly or unwittingly … a victim of a moro-moro” judicial action.
Notorious land-grabber
Young said records from the National Bureau of Investigation showed that Torres was a “notorious land-grabber who has had a skein of syndicated operations relative to brazen acts of land-grabbing not only in Quezon City, but also in the province of Rizal.”
“The modus operandi is for the syndicate to file a case against a fictitious person and try to work out a favorable decision via a judgment by default,” Young said.