Banco Filipino Savings vs Court of Appeals

GR No. 129227

May 30, 2000

Facts

Elsa Arcilla and her husband, Calvin Arcilla, the Appellees in the present recourse,

secured, on three (3) occasions, loans from the Banco Filipino Savings and Mortgage

Bank, the Appellant in the present recourse, in the total amount of P107,946.00 as

evidenced by "Promissory Note”

To secure the payment of said loans, the Appellees executed "Real Estate Mortgages" in

favor of the Appellants over their parcels of land

Under said deeds, the Appellant may increase the rate of interest, on said loans, within

the limits allowed by law, as Appellant’s Board of Directors may prescribe for its

borrowers.

In the meantime, the Skyline Builders, Inc., through its President, Appellee Calvin Arcilla,

secured loans from the Bank of the Philippine Islands in the total amount of

P450,000.00. To insure payment of the aforesaid loan, the FGU Insurance Corporation,

issued PG Bond No. 1003 for the amount of P225,000.00 in favor of the Bank of the

Philippine Islands. Skyline Buildings, Inc., and the Appellees executed an "Agreement of

Counter-Guaranty with Mortgage" in favor of the FGU Insurance Corporation covering

the aforesaid parcels of land to assure payment

The Appellees failed to pay their monthly amortizations to Appellant. The latter

forthwith filed, on April 3, 1979, a petition, with the Provincial Sheriff, for the

extrajudicial foreclosure of Appellees’ "Real Esate Mortgage" in favor of the Appellant

for the amount of P342,798.00 inclusive of the 17% per annum which purportedly was

the totality of Appellees’ account with the Appellant on their loans.

The Appellant was the purchaser of the property at public auction for the aforesaid

amount of P324,798.00. On May 25, 1979, the Sheriff executed a "Certificate of Sale"

over the aforesaid properties

On September 2, 1985, the Appellees filed a complaint in the Court a quo for the
"Annulment of the Loan Contracts, Foreclose Sale with Prohibition and Injunction, Etc."

The Appellees averred that the loan contracts and mortgages between the Appellees

and the Appellant were null and void

Issue

Whether or not the filing of the complaint for annulment of the contracts was already barred

by prescription

Held

Petitioner’s claim that the action of the private respondents have prescribed is bereft of merit.

Under Article 1150 of the Civil Code, the time for prescription of all kinds of action where there

is no special provision which ordains otherwise shall be counted from the day they may be

brought. Thus the period of prescription of any cause of action is reckoned only from the date

of the cause of action accrued. The period should not be made to retroact to the date of the

execution of the contract, but from the date they received the statement of account showing

the increased rate of interest, for it was only from the moment that they discovered the

petitioner’s unilateral increase thereof.