Case Digest (G.R. No. L-6648)
Facts:
Victorias Planters Association, Inc., North Negros Planters Association, Inc., Fernando Gonzaga, Jose Gaston and Cesar L. Lopez v. Victorias Milling Co., Inc., G.R. No. L-6648, July 25, 1955, the Supreme Court, Padilla, J., writing for the Court.This was an action for declaratory judgment under Rule 66 instituted by petitioner-planters and their associations against Victorias Milling Co., Inc. Petitioners alleged they and numerous fellow sugar-cane planters in the districts of Victorias, Manapla and Cadiz had executed standard-form milling contracts with respondent (or its predecessor, North Negros Sugar Co., Inc.) that fixed a thirty-year term measured from the "first milling," and they sought a judicial declaration that those thirty-year terms had expired without entitlement on respondent's part to claim an extension equivalent to the years during which milling did not occur because of World War II and postwar reconstruction.
The parties submitted testimony of one witness and stipulated a set of historical facts: the planters’ associations and individual planter-petitioners are bona fide members and representatives of planters whose harvests were milled by respondent; milling contracts were executed at various times between 1917 and 1934 in substantially identical form (annexes A, B, B-1, C); the North Negros central began milling in 1918‑19 and Victorias in 1921‑22; after the war North Negros did not rebuild and arranged for Victorias Milling to mill the Manapla and Cadiz crops; and planters had repeatedly requested renegotiation of contracts to reflect changed postwar conditions but respondent refused.
Petitioners maintained the thirty‑year contractual periods had run out (for Manapla and Cadiz by the 1947‑48 crop, for Victorias by 1948‑49), while respondent claimed the thirty‑year term meant thirty milling years (not thirty calendar years) and therefore, because the mills did not operate for four wartime years and two reconstruction years, respondent could count only the years when milling actually occurred and thus still had time remaining under ...(Pro-only)
Issues:
- Did the thirty‑year term in the milling contracts mean thirty milling years or thirty consecutive agricultural (calendar) years measured from the first milling?
- Are the war years and reconstruction years during which milling did not occur to be deducted from, or otherwise added to, the thirty‑year contractual period so a...(Pro-only)
Ruling:
- (Pro-only)
Ratio:
- (Pro-only)
Doctrine:
- (Pro-only)