Courts have jurisdiction over possessory actions involving public or private agricultural lands to determine the issue of physical possession as this issue is independent of the question of disposition and alienation of such lands which should be threshed out in the Department of Agrarian Reform.

Thus clarified the Court’s Second Division in a 10-page decision penned by Justice Dante O. Tinga as it reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals dismissing the case for forcible entry filed by petitioner spouses Teresito and Lourdes Villacasin for lack of jurisdiction and instead reinstated the decisions of the Regional Trial Court of Dakit, Bogo, Cebu, Branch 61 and the Municipal Circuit Trial Court of Bantayan, Cebu  ordering, among others, respondent Paul Pelaez to return possession of the subject property to the Villacasins. 

Before judgment was rendered in the forcible entry case, the tenants of the property had already filed a suit with the Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board (DARAB) for the annulment of the real estate mortgage executed by Pelaez over the property in favor of the Development Bank of the Philippines and the subsequent foreclosure and auction sale in favor of petitioners. The Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudicator rendered a decision in favor of the tenants which was later affirmed by the DARAB. 

The Court found that the allegations in petitioners’ complaint for forcible entry sufficiently vest jurisdiction over the action on the MCTC and thus, jurisdiction was rightfully exercised by it and the RTC. “It has not escaped our notice that no landowner-tenant vinculum juris or juridical tie was alleged between petitioners and respondent, let alone that which would characterize the relationship as an agrarian dispute,” it noted. (GR No. 170478, Spouses Villacasin v. Pelaez, May 22, 2008)