Acierto v. Laperal
REITERATIONFacts
The Antecedents: Petitioners occupied portions of respondents' land in Tondo, Manila, under verbal month-to-month lease contracts. The respondents sought to eject the petitioners to construct their own building and had prepared plans for this purpose. Accordingly, they notified the petitioners to vacate the premises. The petitioners, however, offered to deposit monthly rentals, seeking to compel the respondents to accept them and to have the court fix a longer period for their lease. Procedural History: The municipal court ordered the petitioners to vacate the premises and pay monthly rents from December 1958 until their actual vacation. The petitioners appealed this order to the Manila Court of First Instance. The appellate court scheduled a hearing for June 2, 1959. On May 29, 1959, the petitioners' counsel filed a motion for postponement, which was denied. Neither the counsel nor the petitioners appeared at the scheduled hearing on June 2, 1959. Consequently, the Court of First Instance declared the appeal abandoned. A subsequent motion for reconsideration was also denied, leading to the present appeal. The Petition: The petitioners-appellants are before this Court appealing the order of the Court of First Instance which declared their appeal from the municipal court abandoned. They contend that the lower court erred in denying their motion for postponement. The sole remaining issue is whether this motion for postponement should have been granted. The petitioners argue that the denial of their motion for postponement constituted an abuse of discretion, while the respondents maintain that the motion was a dilatory tactic. The Court notes that the motion for postponement was not supported by affidavits, was not scheduled for submission prior to the hearing date, and no appearance was made on behalf of the petitioners on the day of the hearing.
Issue(s)
Whether the Court of First Instance committed an abuse of discretion in denying the petitioners' motion for postponement and declaring their appeal abandoned due to their failure to appear at the scheduled hearing.
Ruling
The Supreme Court affirmed the order of the Court of First Instance, holding that the appeal was validly declared abandoned. The Court found no abuse of discretion in the denial of the motion for postponement and upheld the dismissal of the appeal.
Ratio Decidendi
On Issue 1: The Court ruled that there was no abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court. A motion for postponement is not a matter of right and is addressed to the sound discretion of the court, which was properly exercised here given the suspicion that the motion was a dilatory tactic to prolong possession. The Court emphasized that the counsel's ground for postponement—a conflicting trial schedule—was unsupported by any documentary evidence and the motion itself was not under oath. It was a grave error for the petitioners and their counsel to assume that the motion would be granted and, consequently, fail to appear on the date of the trial. The Court further noted that the motion for reconsideration filed by the petitioners was effectively a motion for relief, yet it lacked the required affidavit of merit to prove a meritorious defense. Finally, the Court observed that the petitioners indeed had no meritorious defense because their lease contracts were month-to-month, meaning they expired at the end of every month without the need for a special demand under the law.
Main Doctrine
The refusal to grant a motion for postponement, absent a clear showing of abuse of discretion and supported by proper documentation, will not be overturned, especially when the appeal is deemed abandoned due to non-appearance.