RUFINA VDA. DE TANGUB v. CA UDK No. 9864 : December 3, 1990

[UDK No. 9864 :  December 3, 1990.]

RUFINA VDA. DE TANGUB, Petitioner, vs. COURT OF APPEALS, PRESIDING JUDGE of the [CAR] RTC, Branch 4, Iligan City, and SPOUSES DOMINGO and EUGENIA MARTIL, Respondents.

Facts:

Rufina Tangub and her husband, Andres, now deceased, filed with the Regional Trial Court of Lanao del Norte "an agrarian case for damages by reason of unlawful dispossession . . .was tenants from the landholding" owned by the Spouses Domingo and Eugenia Martil. Several persons were also impleaded as defendants, including the Philippine National Bank, it being alleged by the plaintiff spouses that said bank, holder of a mortgage on the land involved, had caused foreclosure thereof, resulting in the acquisition of the property by the bank as the highest bidder at the foreclosure sale, and in the sale by the latter, some time later, of portions of the land to the other persons named as its co-defendants (all employees of the National Steel Corporation), and it being prayed that mortgage and the transactions thereafter made in relation thereto be annulled and voided. 

Respondent Judge Felipe G. Javier, Jr. dismissed the complaint. He opined that by virtue of Executive Order No. 229 and Executive No. 129-A, approved on July 26, 1987, as well as the Rules of the Adjudication Board of the Department of Agrarian Reform, jurisdiction of the Regional Trial Court over agrarian cases had been transferred to the Department of Agrarian Reform

\The Court of Appeals dismissed the petition, finding that the jurisdictional question had been correctly resolved by the Trial Court. The Court of Appeals, adverted to a case earlier decided by it, Estanislao Casinillo v. Hon. Felipe G. Javier, Jr., et al., in which it was "emphatically ruled that agrarian cases no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Regional Trial Courts but rather under the jurisdiction of the DAR Adjudication Board."

The petitioner Rufina Vda. de Tangub, now widowed, is once again before the Supreme Court, contending that the Trial Court's "order of dismissal, and the decision of the Honorable Court of Appeals affirming it, are patently illegal and unconstitutional" because they deprive "a poor tenant access to courts and directly violate R.A. 6657, PD 946, and Batas Bilang 129."

Issue:

Whether or not the RTC and the CA erred in dismissing the case filed by the petitioners Tangub?

Ruling:

NO. The Regional Trial Court of Iligan City was therefore correct in dismissing Agrarian Case No. 1094. It being a case concerning the rights of the plaintiffs as tenants on agricultural land, not involving the "special jurisdiction" of said Trial Court acting as a Special Agrarian Court, it clearly came within the exclusive original jurisdiction of the Department of Agrarian Reform, or more particularly, the Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board, established precisely to wield the adjudicatory powers of the Department, supra.