Article 434, Civil Code - action to recover ownership of land; what to prove. - G.R. No. 175763

G.R. No. 175763

"x x x.

Under Article 434 of the Civil Code, to successfully maintain an action to recover the ownership of a real property, the person who claims a better right to it must prove two (2) things: first, the identity of the land claimed; and second, his title thereto.  In regard to the first requisite, in an accion reinvindicatoria, the person who claims that he has a better right to the property must first fix the identity of the land he is claiming by describing the location, area and boundaries thereof.[46]  In this case, petitioners failed to identify Lot 2 by providing evidence of the metes and bounds thereof, so that the same may be compared with the technical description contained in OCT No. 1035, which would have shown whether Lot 2 consisting of 147 square meters was erroneously included in respondents’ title.  The testimony of Agueda Dinguinbayan’s son would not suffice because said witness merely stated the boundary owners as indicated in the 1966 and 1967 tax declarations of his mother.  On his part, Arturo Tayag claimed that he had the lots surveyed in the 1970s in preparation for the consolidation of the two parcels. However, no such plan was presented in court.
x x x."