The Court of Appeals (CA) has ordered a  Manila court against implementing its order authorizing owners of the Grand Boulevard Hotel to redeem the foreclosed hotel property forfeited in favor of the Manila city government.
In a 16-page decision  by Associate Justice Normandie Pizarro, the appellate tribunal’s Second Division granted the petition filed by Rafaelito Garayblas, secretary to the Office of the Mayor of Manila, seeking to annul the Dec. 18, 2009 order of Judge William Simon Peralta of the Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 50 which found the tender proffered by Silahis International Hotel Inc. (SIHI) to be proper.
Associate Justices Remedios Salazar-Fernando and Manuel Barrios concurred with the ruling.
The CA said the RTC  acted with grave abuse of discretion and without jurisdiction in taking cognizance of SIHI’s motion.
“Based on the above, it is abundantly clear that a court’s jurisdiction to take cognizance of a motion for execution pending appeal is subject to the conditions that it still has jurisdiction over the case and still has possession over the records. This is not the situation at bench,” the CA ruled.
The appellate court further said SIHI’s motion did not contain any good reason to justify the execution of the RTC’s December 2009 judgment since it was heavily anchored only on the theory that the appeal lodged by the city government is dilatory.
“In allowing execution pending appeal on such theory, respondent RTC was not mindful of the SC’s admonition that ‘it is not within the competence of the trial court… to rule that appeal is patently dilatory, and rely on the same as its basis for finding good reason to grant the motion. Only the appellate court can appreciate the dilatory intent of an appeal…’” the CA held.
On Jan. 14, 2008, the Treasurer’s Office of the city of Manila issued warrants of levy over seven parcels of land upon which the hotel stood, and over the hotel itself, in view of the owners’ failure to pay real property and business taxes.
Sixteen days later, the lands and the hotel were publicly auctioned and were sold in its entirety by the city’s committee on public auction to the highest bidder, R2 Builders Inc, in the amount of P254 million.
R2 Builders, however, failed to pay the purchase price for the properties despite notice, thus these were forfeited in favor of the city of Manila.
On Jan. 9, 2009, respondent SIHI tendered two checks with the aggregate face value of P6,119,566.19 to the city treasurer’s office as redemption price for the property, covered by TCT No. 139628, allegedly just a portion of the auctioned properties.
The city treasurer, however, refused to accept SIHI’s checks on the grounds that the redemption should be for all of the auctioned properties, that is the lands and the hotel itself, since these were auctioned of and sold as one whole property; that assuming redemption of levied property is an option under tax laws, the period to redeem has already expired, and that TCT 139628 is not one of the properties auctioned and sold as no part of the hotel is covered by such certificate of title.