GR No.

L-47362 December 19, 1940

VILLARROEL
JUAN
F., relapsing-appellant,
vs. BERNARDINO ESTRADA, turned-appealed.
D. Felipe Agoncillo on behalf of the
D. Oben on behalf of Crispin turned-appealed.

appellant-appelante.

prescribed. As the defendant the only herdero of the original debtor, with
the right to succeed her in his inheritance, that debt brought by her
mother legally, but lost their effectiveness by prescription, it is now,
however, for a moral obligation, which is consideration enough to create
and make effective and enforceable his obligation voluntarily on August 9,
1930 in the Exhibito B.
The rule that a new promise to pay a prrescrita debt must be made by the
same person obligated or other legally authorized by it, is not applicable
to the present case that compliance with the obligation of the obligated
orignalmente is not required, but which as I wanted des voluntarily
assume this obligation.

AVANCEA, Pres. :
On May 9, 1912, Alejandro F. Callao, mother of defendant John F.
Villarroel, obtained from spouses Mariano Estrada and Severina a loan of
P1,000 payable after seven years (Exhibito A). Alejandra died, leaving as
sole heir to the defendant. Spouses Mariano Estrada and Severina died
too, leaving as sole heir to the plaintiff Bernardino Estrada. On August 9,
1930, the defendant signed a document (Exhibito B) which states in duty
the applicant the sum of P1,000, with an interest of 12 percent per
year. This action concerns the payment of this amount.
The Court of First Instance of Laguna, in which this action was filed,
condemn the defendant to pay the claimed amount of P1,000 its legal
interests of 12 percent a year since August 9, 1930 until full payment. I
will appeal this sentence.
It will be noted that the parties in the present case are, respectively, the
only heirs of the original creditor and debtor. This action is brought under
the obligation that the defendant as the only son of the original debtor
contracted for the plaintiff, sole heir of primitive loa creditors. It is
recognized that the amount of P1,000 to this obligation contracts is the
same debt mother sued the parents of the plaintiff.
Lawphil.net

Although the action to recover the original debt has already prescribed
when the lawsuit was filed in this case, the question that arises in this
appeal is primarily whether, notwithstanding such prescription is brought
from the action. However, this action is not based on the original
obligation contracted by the mother of the defendant, who has already
prescribed, but which contracted the defendant on August 9, 1930
(Exhibito B) by assuming the fulfillment of that obligation, and

the original ruling, with costs against the appellant is confirmed. So it is

ordered.

of indebtedness from the government of my back pay I

will be allowed to pay the amount out of it.
Said spouses not having paid the obligation on the specified date, the
DBP filed a complaint dated September 11, 1970 in the City Court of Iloilo
City against the spouses for the payment of the loan.
G.R. No. L-48889 May 11, 1989
DEVELOPMENT BANK OF THE PHILIPPINES (DBP), petitioner,
vs.
THE HONORABLE MIDPAINTAO L. ADIL, Judge of the Second
Branch of the Court of First Instance of Iloilo and SPOUSES
PATRICIO CONFESOR and JOVITA VILLAFUERTE, respondents.

GANCAYCO, J.:
The issue posed in this petition for review on certiorari is the validity of a
promissory note which was executed in consideration of a previous
promissory note the enforcement of which had been barred by
prescription.
On February 10, 1940 spouses Patricio Confesor and Jovita Villafuerte
obtained an agricultural loan from the Agricultural and Industrial Bank
(AIB), now the Development of the Philippines (DBP), in the sum of
P2,000.00, Philippine Currency, as evidenced by a promissory note of
said date whereby they bound themselves jointly and severally to pay the
account in ten (10) equal yearly amortizations. As the obligation remained
outstanding and unpaid even after the lapse of the aforesaid ten-year
period, Confesor, who was by then a member of the Congress of the
Philippines, executed a second promissory note on April 11, 1961
expressly acknowledging said loan and promising to pay the same on or
before June 15, 1961. The new promissory note reads as follows
I hereby promise to pay the amount covered by my
promissory note on or before June 15, 1961. Upon my
failure to do so, I hereby agree to the foreclosure of my
mortgage. It is understood that if I can secure a certificate

After trial on the merits a decision was rendered by the inferior court on
December 27, 1976, the dispositive part of which reads as follows:
WHEREFORE, premises considered, this Court renders
judgment, ordering the defendants Patricio Confesor and
Jovita Villafuerte Confesor to pay the plaintiff
Development Bank of the Philippines, jointly and
severally, (a) the sum of P5,760.96 plus additional daily
interest of P l.04 from September 17, 1970, the date
Complaint was filed, until said amount is paid; (b) the sum
of P576.00 equivalent to ten (10%) of the total claim by
way of attorney's fees and incidental expenses plus
interest at the legal rate as of September 17,1970, until
fully paid; and (c) the costs of the suit.
Defendants-spouses appealed therefrom to the Court of First Instance of
Iloilo wherein in due course a decision was rendered on April 28, 1978
reversing the appealed decision and dismissing the complaint and
counter-claim with costs against the plaintiff.
A motion for reconsideration of said decision filed by plaintiff was denied
in an order of August 10, 1978. Hence this petition wherein petitioner
alleges that the decision of respondent judge is contrary to law and runs
counter to decisions of this Court when respondent judge (a) refused to
recognize the law that the right to prescription may be renounced or
waived; and (b) that in signing the second promissory note respondent
Patricio Confesor can bind the conjugal partnership; or otherwise said
respondent became liable in his personal capacity. The petition is
impressed with merit. The right to prescription may be waived or
renounced. Article 1112 of Civil Code provides:
Art. 1112. Persons with capacity to alienate property may
renounce prescription already obtained, but not the right
to prescribe in the future.

Prescription is deemed to have been tacitly renounced

when the renunciation results from acts which imply the
abandonment of the right acquired.
There is no doubt that prescription has set in as to the first promissory
note of February 10, 1940. However, when respondent Confesor
executed the second promissory note on April 11, 1961 whereby he
promised to pay the amount covered by the previous promissory note on
or before June 15, 1961, and upon failure to do so, agreed to the
foreclosure of the mortgage, said respondent thereby effectively and
expressly renounced and waived his right to the prescription of the action
covering the first promissory note.
This Court had ruled in a similar case that
... when a debt is already barred by prescription, it cannot
be enforced by the creditor. But a new contract
recognizing and assuming the prescribed debt would be
valid and enforceable ... . 1
Thus, it has been held
Where, therefore, a party acknowledges the correctness
of a debt and promises to pay it after the same has
prescribed and with full knowledge of the prescription he
thereby waives the benefit of prescription. 2
This is not a mere case of acknowledgment of a debt that has prescribed
but a new promise to pay the debt. The consideration of the new
promissory note is the pre-existing obligation under the first promissory
note. The statutory limitation bars the remedy but does not discharge the
debt.
A new express promise to pay a debt barred ... will take
the case from the operation of the statute of limitations as
this proceeds upon the ground that as a statutory
limitation merely bars the remedy and does not discharge
the debt, there is something more than a mere moral
obligation to support a promise, to wit a pre-existing
debt which is a sufficient consideration for the new the

new promise; upon this sufficient consideration

constitutes, in fact, a new cause of action. 3
... It is this new promise, either made in express terms or
deduced from an acknowledgement as a legal implication,
which is to be regarded as reanimating the old promise, or
as imparting vitality to the remedy (which by lapse of time
had become extinct) and thus enabling the creditor to
recover upon his original contract. 4

However, the court a quo held that in signing the promissory note alone,
respondent Confesor cannot thereby bind his wife, respondent Jovita
Villafuerte, citing Article 166 of the New Civil Code which provides:
Art. 166. Unless the wife has been declared a non
compos mentis or a spend thrift, or is under civil
interdiction or is confined in a leprosarium, the husband
cannot alienate or encumber any real property of the
conjugal partnership without, the wife's consent. If she ay
compel her to refuses unreasonably to give her consent,
the court m grant the same.
We disagree. Under Article 165 of the Civil Code, the husband is the
administrator of the conjugal partnership. As such administrator, all debts
and obligations contracted by the husband for the benefit of the conjugal
partnership, are chargeable to the conjugal partnership. 5 No doubt, in this
case, respondent Confesor signed the second promissory note for the benefit
of the conjugal partnership. Hence the conjugal partnership is liable for this
obligation.
WHEREFORE, the decision subject of the petition is reversed and set
aside and another decision is hereby rendered reinstating the decision of
the City Court of Iloilo City of December 27, 1976, without
pronouncement as to costs in this instance. This decision is immediately
executory and no motion for extension of time to file motion for
reconsideration shall be granted.

submitted an opposition which the court will consider together

with the arguments presented by respondents and the Exhibits
marked and presented, namely, Exhibits 1 to 5, at the hearing of
the motion to dismiss; considering that the action in brief is one to
compel respondents to declare a Christmas bonus for petitioners
workers in the National Development Company; considering that
the Court does not see how petitioners may have a cause of
action to secure such bonus because:
(a) A bonus is an act of liberality and the court takes it that it is not
within its judicial powers to command respondents to be liberal;
(b) Petitioners admit that respondents are not under legal duty to
give such bonus but that they had only ask that such bonus be
given to them because it is a moral obligation of respondents to
give that but as this Court understands, it has no power to compel
a party to comply with a moral obligation (Art. 142, New Civil
Code.).
G.R. No. L-13667

April 29, 1960

IN VIEW WHEREOF, dismissed. No pronouncement as to costs.

PRIMITIVO
ANSAY,
ETC.,
ET
AL., plaintiffs-appellants,
vs.
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
COMPANY, ET AL., defendants-appellees.
Celso
A.
Fernandez
Juan C. Jimenez, for appellees.

for

appellants.

PARAS, C. J.:
On July 25, 1956, appellants filed against appellees in the Court of First
Instance of Manila a complaint praying for a 20% Christmas bonus for the
years 1954 and 1955. The court a quo on appellees' motion to dismiss,
issued the following order:
Considering the motion to dismiss filed on 15 August, 1956, set
for this morning; considering that at the hearing thereof, only
respondents appeared thru counsel and there was no
appearance for the plaintiffs although the court waited for
sometime for them; considering, however, that petitioners have

A motion for reconsideration of the afore-quoted order was denied.

Hence this appeal.
Appellants contend that there exists a cause of action in their complaint
because their claim rests on moral grounds or what in brief is defined by
law as a natural obligation.
Since appellants admit that appellees are not under legal obligation to
give such claimed bonus; that the grant arises only from a moral
obligation or the natural obligation that they discussed in their brief, this
Court feels it urgent to reproduce at this point, the definition and meaning
of natural obligation.
Article 1423 of the New Civil Code classifies obligations into civil or
natural. "Civil obligations are a right of action to compel their
performance. Natural obligations, not being based on positive law but on
equity and natural law, do not grant a right of action to enforce their
performance, but after voluntary fulfillment by the obligor, they authorize
the retention of what has been delivered or rendered by reason thereof".

It is thus readily seen that an element of natural obligation before it can

be cognizable by the court is voluntary fulfillment by the obligor. Certainly
retention can be ordered but only after there has been voluntary
performance. But here there has been no voluntary performance. In fact,
the court cannot order the performance.

Even if a bonus is not demandable for not forming part of the

wage, salary or compensation of an employee, the same may
nevertheless, be granted on equitable consideration as when it
was given in the past, though withheld in succeeding two years
from low salaried employees due to salary increases.

At this point, we would like to reiterate what we said in the case of

Philippine Education Co. vs. CIR and the Union of Philippine Education
Co., Employees (NUL) (92 Phil., 381; 48 Off. Gaz., 5278)

still the facts in said Heacock case are not the same as in the instant one,
and hence the ruling applied in said case cannot be considered in the
present action.

xxx

xxx

xxx

From the legal point of view a bonus is not a demandable and

enforceable obligation. It is so when it is made a part of the wage
or salary compensation.
And while it is true that the subsequent case of H. E.
Heacock vs. National Labor Union, et al., 95 Phil., 553; 50 Off. Gaz.,
4253, we stated that: