G.R. NO. 150233 - RITA JUCO, VS. HEIRS OF TOMAS SIY CHUNG FU REPRESENTED BY PETER SIY AND TOMAS SIY, JR..D E C I S I O N - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

WHEREFORE, for the repeated failure of the plaintiff to appear at the hearings of the case, for their failure to prosecute their action for an unreasonable length of time and for their failure and/or refusal to comply with a lawful court orders (sic), this case is hereby ordered dismissed, with costs de oficio . [6] The Motion for Reconsideration of the Order of dismissal having been denied, the heirs of Tomas Siy Chung Fu appealed on 21 March 1989. However, on 31 March 1989, said appeal was denied due course for having been filed out of time. Despite the finality of the dismissal of the reconstitution case, the heirs of Tomas Siy Chung Fu filed a complaint [7] for revival of judgment on 20 December 1990 before Branch 20 of the RTC of Naga City. In said petition, they claimed that the decision in Civil Case No. 7281 dated 03 February 1976 was actually reconstituted in the dismissed petition for reconstitution (Civil Case No. R-581) and that the same had become final and executory. In her answer, herein petitioner Rita Juco denied the allegations and maintained that the records and the decision of Civil Case No. 7281 were never reconstituted as, in fact, the petition for reconstitution was dismissed. She further argued that even granting, for the sake of argument, that the decision was reconstituted, the same did not become final and executory since at the time the records were destroyed, the said decision was being appealed and there was a pending motion for reconsideration of the disapproval of the record on appeal. On 25 September 1991, the court a quo dismissed the complaint for revival of judgment, which was thereafter appealed by the heirs of Tomas Siy Chung Fu, to the Court of Appeals. In a Decision, [8] dated 09 August 1994, the appellate court held that the records and the decision in Civil Case No. 7281 were not reconstituted. According to the Court of Appeals: There is the question of whether the decision in the recovery of property case was reconstituted in the reconstitution case. It was not. Plaintiffs, in saying that the decision was reconstituted, rely in the Order dated November 5, 1984, which partly states that: x x x, the court hereby resolves, in the interest of justice and equity and in order to fill up the deficiencies in the records of this case, to admit plaintiffs Annexes A, B (which is the decision in the recovery of property case) and C attached to the said Omnibus Motion (1) and to form integral parts of the record in this case, as reconstituted (Parenthetical notes and underscoring Ours, Records, Civil Case No. R-581, p.127). The foregoing Order is nothing more than an order to admit the subject decision as one of the pleadings to be reconstituted. Said Order was not a final order which terminated the reconstitution case. Rather, at that stage, the reconstitution court was still in the process of admitting pleadings and documents to be reconstituted. If there was any grant at all, it was the grant of plainti