GR No. 2353
July 16, 1910
Facts
This is a case involving municipal officials and a priest. The plaintiff is a priest while the defendants were members of the municipal board of the municipality of Pacer. Here, the municipal officers wrote a letter to the priest. Such letter provides that there was an order from the provincial fiscal that the the cemeteries, convents, and other buildings erected on land belonging to the town at the expense of the town and preserved by it belong to the town. Hence, the municipal officers notify that all revenues and products arising therefrom shall be turned into the Treasury of the Municipality of Placer. Moreover, the image of St Vicente, which is donated to the people is a property of the people and must therefore be turned to the municipality for preservation. Thereafter, the defendants took possession of the church and its appurtenances, and also of all of the personal property contained therein.
With that, the plaintiff as a priest brought an action to recover from the defendants the value of the articles confiscated and the rental value of the church. The Lower Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff. On appeal, the defendants presented as a defense that the plaintiff is not the real party in interest. This is because the real party in interest is the bishop of the diocese within which the church was located or the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church. Hence, the action is in contravention with Section 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Issue
Whether or not the court a quo erred in permitting the action to be brought and continued in the name of the plaintiff instead of in the name of the bishop of the diocese within which the church was located, or in the name of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, as the real party in interest.
Held
No. Here, the Court allowed the substitution of plaintiff as the party in interest. Section 503 of the Civil Procedure Code provided that “No judgment shall be reversed on formal or technical grounds.” Section 110 of the same Code provided that in furtherance of justice, the court is empowered to allow a party to amend any pleading or proceeding at any stage of the action. Here, the Court further elucidated that:
“A litigation is not a game of technicalities in which one, more deeply schooled and skilled in the subtle art of movement and position, entraps and destroys the other. It is, rather, a contest in which each contending party fully and fairly lays before the court the facts in issue and then, brushing aside as wholly trivial and indecisive all imperfections of form and technicalities of procedure, asks that justice be done upon the merits. Lawsuits, unlike duels, are not to be won by a rapier’s thrust. Technicality, when it deserts its proper office as an aid to justice and becomes its great hindrance and chief enemy, deserves scant consideration from courts. There should be no vested rights in technicalities. No litigant should be permitted to challenge a record of a court of these Islands for defect of form when his substantial rights have not been prejudiced thereby. “
Therefore, the judgement rendered by the lower court cannot be reversed even if the plaintiff therein is not the real party in interest.