Title
Buendia vs. Sotto
Case
G.R. No. 45696
Decision Date
May 9, 1939
Trial court amended judgment without providing defendant annexes or holding a new trial, violating due process; Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
due process
constitutional right
judgment
A

Case Summary (G.R. No. 45696)

Parties and Setting

Gil Buendia sought relief in the trial court and obtained a monetary award in the initial decision rendered on March 16, 1937. Vicente Sotto appealed from the trial court’s later amendatory judgment of June 14, 1937, raising multiple alleged errors, of which errors IV and V were procedural and therefore addressed first by the Supreme Court.

Trial Court Proceedings and the First Judgment

On March 16, 1937, the Court of First Instance of Manila rendered judgment in favor of Gil Buendia and against Vicente Sotto. The dispositive portion ordered Sotto to pay P 1,573.26, with legal interest from the filing of the complaint (or November 21, 1936) until full payment, plus costs. This first judgment became the baseline against which the subsequent amendatory judgment would be measured.

The “Motion for Reconsideration and Reopening of Trial”

On April 22, 1937, Buendia filed through counsel a pleading entitled “Motion for Reconsideration and Reopening of Trial.” The notice of the motion was sent to Sotto, and a copy of the motion itself was furnished. However, the notice was not accompanied by copies of the documents attached to the motion, namely annexes A, B, C, and D. In the motion, Buendia excepted to the March 16, 1937 judgment, asserting that the trial court had twice deducted amounts representing legal interest and costs, and further alleging that, through mistake, oversight, accident, excusable negligence, and because a particular matter had been treated as undisputed, counsel had neglected to include in the stipulation of facts the fact that the sum of P 400 stated in Exhibit A had already been paid to Atty. Vicente Sotto. The motion prayed that the court be allowed to attach annexes A, B, C, and D and that the judgment be reformed and amended so that the P 400 would not be deducted from the amount to be returned by Sotto to Buendia.

How the Trial Court Handled the Motion

After granting the motion for reconsideration, the trial court admitted annexes A, B, C, and D and proceeded to reconsider and amend its prior decision. On June 14, 1937, it rendered an amendatory judgment whose dispositive portion, as transcribed at the outset, ordered Sotto to pay P 2,600.88, with legal interest from the filing of the complaint (or November 21, 1936) until full payment, plus costs. The record indicated that the court did not hold a new trial and did not conduct a hearing with the parties before considering and acting on the evidentiary annexes.

Issues Raised on Appeal

In his appeal, Vicente Sotto assigned seven alleged errors. The Supreme Court first resolved errors IV and V, which attacked the procedure by which the trial court entertained and resolved the motion.

Error IV argued that the trial court erred in not striking from the record the motion for reconsideration and reopening of trial because it was not filed with the notice form prescribed by the Rules of Court of First Instance, paragraph 18.

Error V alleged that the trial judge erred in considering and deciding the motion for reconsideration and reopening of trial without setting it for trial and without first hearing the defendant.

The Supreme Court’s Discussion of Error IV (Notice and Annexes)

On error IV, the Court relied on Soriano vs. Ramirez (44 Phil., 519). It held that for the validity of a motion for new trial on the ground that the decision was not justified by the evidence and was contrary to law, it was not necessary for the movant to give the adverse party notice of the date of the hearing. The Court explained that the provision on notification to the adverse party lay within the trial court’s discretion, and that notice was required only when the court was disposed to grant the motion; even then, the court ordered the manner it deemed fit. The Court further noted that articles 9 and 10 of the Rules of Court of First Instance contained a three-day notice requirement, but this rule had a proviso. It pointed out that Section 146 of the Code of Civil Procedure governed motions for new trial by providing that notification would be made as the judge may direct, making notice not an essential requirement for validity in this context.

Applying this doctrine, the Supreme Court concluded that it was not necessary that the adverse party be notified of the filing of the motion for new trial, unless the trial court so ordered. It also ruled that any failure to attach to the notice copies of the pleadings and documents upon which the motion rested was not a defect sufficient to invalidate the order or decision of a competent judge resolving the motion. Accordingly, error IV was without merit.

The Supreme Court’s Discussion of Error V (Due Process and Required Reopening)

On error V, the Supreme Court addressed a more fundamental procedural defect. It recognized that even if the alleged mistake could be corrected, the correction could not be done in the manner followed by the trial court. The Court emphasized that Section 113 of the Code of Civil Procedure authorized a court, in its discretion, to relieve a party from the effect of a judgment rendered against the party through mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable negligence, and that a motion invoking this relief could be treated as a request to set aside a judgment under Section 113, subject to the court’s discretion and on such terms as it deemed just.

The Court clarified that when the court grants relief under Section 113, it should set aside the judgment and then order the holding of a new trial by setting a date and hearing the parties. The trial court could not, in the absence of the parties, immediately proceed to reconsider its decision, admit new evidence, and amend the judgment substantially based on that evidence.

The Supreme Court found the procedure used by the trial court in this case to be anomalous and constitutionally infirm. It observed that the trial court, in its June 14, 1937 order, declared that it found the motion justified and, after admitting the annexes attached to the motion, reconsidered its decision and amended it accordingly. The Supreme Court reasoned that the grant of a motion for new trial necessarily set aside the original decision such that there was no judgment to execute and none to amend. Consequently, the June 14, 1937 decision became a new judgment rendered without hearing the parties and without a prior trial, based solely on documents admitted through the motion. The Court characterized this as an excess of jurisdiction and held the amendatory judgment illegal and void.

Constitutional Reasoning: Due Process and Deprivation of Property

The Court anchored its ruling on Article III, Section 1(1) of the Constitution, which guarantees that a defendant shall not be deprived of property without due process of law. It held that the amendatory judgment violated the defendant’s right to due process because the defendant had not been afforded the hearing that a proper reopening and new trial would require. In particular, the Supreme Court stated that a judge who, after granting a motion for new trial filed under Section 113, proceeds to consider documentary evidence attached to the motion without previous hearing of the parties and then amends the decision accordingly, violates the constitutional protection against deprivation of property without due

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