G.R. No. 115953 - GENOVEVA LIGOT SEMPIO AND HEIRS OF BERNARDO SEMPIO, VS. COURT OF APPEALS AND DEVELOPMENT BANK OF THE PHILIPPINES.

Ruling

WHEREFORE, judgment is hereby rendered in favor of plaintiff Genoveva Ligot and the substituted plaintiffs against the defendant bank ordering the following: a) The extrajudicial foreclosure of the real estate mortgage, the Sheriffs Certificate of Sale, and all consequent proceedings thereafter over a parcel of land subject of mortgage and covered by TCT No. T-6263 of the Registry of Deeds of Bulacan in the names of plaintiffs Bernardo Sempio and Genoveva Ligot are hereby declared null and void and of no legal effect. b) Plaintiff Genoveva Ligot vda. de Sempio and the substituted plaintiffs are hereby ordered to pay the defendant bank the amount of P119,320.00 with legal rate of interest effective March 1, 1982 minus the amount of P30,301.00 paid for by the plaintiffs after the public auction sale; c) Defendant bank is hereby ordered to execute the release and/or cancellation of the mortgage upon full payment of plaintiffs obligations; and d) Defendant bank is hereby ordered to pay P5,000.00 as and for attorneys fees. x x x x The court a quo concluded that the plaintiffs were not even aware of the extrajudicial foreclosure proceedings as, in fact, they continued to pay their loan obligations even after the auction sale. Their payments were also accepted by the bank as evidenced by its official Receipts Nos. 138033 and 138109. The bid of DBP to reconsider the above decision was rejected by the trial court. It ruled that the repeated and chronic failure of defendant and its counsel to appear during the scheduled pre-trials and hearings despite due notice was without justifiable cause. DBP gravely abused the accommodations so generously granted to it by the court. It further declared that the Agreement to Postpone the holding of the auction sale was not even duly signed by mortgagor Bernardo Sempio. The letter offering to repurchase the property was likewise not signed by Bernardo Sempio and Genoveva Ligot nor by any of the substituted plaintiffs but by one Adela Sempio de la Cruz who was not one of them. DBP then sought relief from respondent Court of Appeals by filing a Petition for Certiorari, Prohibition and Mandamus which, at first, was denied by the Court of Appeals [9] - First, the respondent court, under the facts, has jurisdiction over the case and authority to issue the questioned decision and the order denying the motion for reconsideration. It had been stated over and over again that the functions of both writs of cetiorari and prohibition are to keep an inferior court within the bounds of its jurisdiction or to prevent it from committing grave abuse of discretion amounting to excess of jurisdiction. Where there is jurisdiction over the subject matter the decision or order on all other questions arising in the case is but an exercise of that jurisdiction (Herrera v. Baretto, et al., 85 Phil. 245; Commodity Financing Company v. Jimenez, L-31384, June 29, 1979). Not every error in the proceeding or every erroneous conclusion of law or o