G.R. No. 135706 - SPS. CESAR A. LARROBIS, JR. AND VIRGINIA S. LARROBIS, VS. PHILIPPINE VETERANS BANK.D E C I S I O N - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

WHEREFORE, premises considered judgment is hereby rendered dismissing the complaint for lack of merit. Likewise the compulsory counterclaim of defendant is dismissed for being unmeritorious. [9] It reasoned that: defendant bank was placed under receivership by the Central Bank from April 1985 until 1992. The defendant bank was given authority by the Central Bank to operate as a private commercial bank and became fully operational only on August 3, 1992. From April 1985 until July 1992, defendant bank was restrained from doing its business. Doing business as construed by Justice Laurel in 222 SCRA 131 refers to: .a continuity of commercial dealings and arrangements and contemplates to that extent, the performance of acts or words or the exercise of some of the functions normally incident to and in progressive prosecution of the purpose and object of its organization. The defendant banks right to foreclose the mortgaged property prescribes in ten (10) years but such period was interrupted when it was placed under receivership. Article 1154 of the New Civil Code to this effect provides: The period during which the obligee was prevented by a fortuitous event from enforcing his right is not reckoned against him. In the case of Provident Savings Bank vs. Court of Appeals, 222 SCRA 131, the Supreme Court said. Having arrived at the conclusion that a foreclosure is part of a banks activity which could not have been pursued by the receiver then because of the circumstances discussed in the Central Bank case, we are thus convinced that the prescriptive period was legally interrupted by fuerza mayor in 1972 on account of the prohibition imposed by the Monetary Board against petitioner from transacting business, until the directive of the Board was nullified in 1981. Indeed, the period during which the obligee was prevented by a caso fortuito from enforcing his right is not reckoned against him. (Art. 1154, NCC) When prescription is interrupted, all the benefits acquired so far from the possession cease and when prescription starts anew, it will be entirely a new one. This concept should not be equated with suspension where the past period is included in the computation being added to the period after the prescription is presumed (4 Tolentino, Commentaries and Jurisprudence on the Civil Code of the Philippines 1991 ed. pp. 18-19), consequently, when the closure of the petitioner was set aside in 1981, the period of ten years within which to foreclose under Art. 1142 of the N.C.C. began to run and, therefore, the action filed on August 21, 1986 to compel petitioner to release the mortgage carried with it the mistaken notion that petitioners own suit for foreclosure has prescribed. Even assuming that the liquidation of defendant bank did not affect its right to foreclose the plaintiffs mortgaged property, the questioned extrajudicial foreclosure was well within the ten (10) year prescriptive period. It is noteworthy to mention at this point in time