THE SUPREME COURT recently wrote finis to the 21-year-old dispute involving 14,771 sq.m. of land in Boracay Island, Malay, Aklan.
     In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Presbitero J. Velasco, Jr., the Court’s Second Division denied the petition of Vicente delos Santos et al. and affirmed the May 11, 1999 decision and January 31, 2000 resolution of the Court of Appeals (CA) which dismissed on a technicality their appeal concerning four adjoining Boracay lots based on a compromise agreement and considered their respective appeals withdrawn.
     “With the loss of their right of appeal to the CA, we see no need to resolve the issue of ownership. Such issue should have been first resolved by the CA, but it was not able to do so because of the dismissal of the appeal. Thus, the claim of ownership is a non-issue before this Court,” it said.
     The Court noted that petitioners delos Santos et al. failed to file their motion for reconsideration before the CA within the 15-day reglementary period which begins to run upon receipt of notice of the decision or final order appealed from pursuant to sec. 1 of Rule 37, in conjunction with sec.3 of Rule 41 of the Rules of Court. It said that the 15-day period ran from May 24, 1999, when Atty. Napoleon Victoriano, counsel of petitioners, received a copy of the assailed CA decision and not from June 2, 1999 when petitioners claimed to have received their copy. The Court stressed that “service upon the parties’ counsels of record is tantamount to service upon the parties themselves, but service upon the parties themselves is not considered service upon their lawyers.”
     The Court stressed that petitioners were “guilty of inexcusable negligence,” noting that they did not even know that Victoriano failed to file an appellants’ brief on their behalf during the more than 180 day extension that he sought from the CA, aside from their failure to learn of the CA decision. (Delos Santos, et al. v. Elizalde, et al., GR Nos. 141810 & 141812, February 2, 2007)