Mercado v.
Espiritu (December 1, 1917)
Ponente: Torres J.:
F A C TS:
Petitioners Domingo and Josefa Mercado brought
suit against Luis Espiritu (but now directed against
the administrator, Jose Espiritu, since Luis died),
alleging that they and their sisters are the sole
heirs of Margarita Espiritu, their mother and the
sister of the defendant. Petitioners claim that in
1910, Luis, by means of cajolery, induced and
fraudulently succeeded in getting the petitioners
to sign a deed of the land left by their mother for
P400, notwithstanding the fact that said land,
according to its assessment, was valued at P3,795.
They therefore ask that the sale be rendered null
& void and that defendant be ordered to deliver
and restore to petitioners the shares of the land,
together with its products.
The defendant answers this by saying that
Margarita, with due authorization of her husband
and petitioners’ father Wenceslao, sold to Luis a
portion of the land (15 cavanes of seed) for
P2,000. To cover his children’s needs, Wenceslao
subsequently pledged or mortgaged to Luis the
remainder of said land (6 cavanes of seed) at
P375. With this amount being insufficient, he
additionally borrowed other sums of money
aggregating a total of P600. After their father’s
death, the petitioners then declared themselves
to be of legal age and executed, together with
their sisters, the notarial instrument ratifying the
previous contracts and selling absolutely and in
perpetuity to Luis Espiritu, for the sum of P400 “as
an increase” of the previous purchase price, the
property that had belonged to their mother.
ISS U E:
WON the sale can be annulled on the grounds
that petitioners were minors without legal
capacity to contract on the date of its execution,
and that the defendant availed himself of deceit
and fraud in obtaining petitioners’ consent.
H EL D:
No, the sale cannot be annulled.
First, the evidence adduced at the trial doesn’t
show, even circumstantially, that the purchaser
Luis Espiritu employed fraud, deceit, violence or
intimidation in order to effect the sale. Second, no
evidence appears in the records that petitioners
were minors when they executed and signed the
document. No certified copies of their baptismal
certificates were presented, nor did they produce
any supplemental evidence to prove that
Domingo was 19 and Josefa 18 when they signed
the document. The statement made by one of the
adult parties of said deed, in reference to certain
notes made in a book or copybook of a private
nature, which she said their father kept during his
lifetime and until his death, is not sufficient to
prove the plaintiff’s minority on the date of the
execution of the deed.
Even in the doubt whether they were of legal age
on the date referred to, the courts, in their
interpretation of the law, have laid down the rule
that the sale of real estate, effected by minors
who pretend to be of legal age, is valid, and they
cannot be permitted afterwards to excuse
themselves from compliance with the obligation
assumed by them or to seek their annulment.
(Law 6, title 19, 6th partida.1) The judgment that
holds such a sale to be valid and absolves the
purchase from the complaint filed against him
doesn’t violate the law relative to the sale of
minors’ property nor the rules laid down in
consonance therewith.
1
“If he who is a minor (1) deceitfully says or sets
forth in an instrument that he is over twenty-five
years of age, and this assertion is believed by
another person who takes him to be of about that
age, (2) in an action at law he should be deemed to
be of the age he asserted, and should not (3)
afterwards be released from liability on the plea that
was not of said age when he assumed the obligation.
The reason for this is that the law helps the deceived
and not the deceivers.”