SC should revisit judicial fees

This is a true-to-life story. Two brothers inherited a parcel of raw real estate in Laguna then worth P30 million and became co-owners thereof with the title registered in their names since 1988. Relying on the government-backed security and reliability of their Torrens title, they never imagined their property would be gone without their knowing it! They found out about the scam only when, for the first time, they tried to apply for a bank loan and were instructed to present a certified true copy of their owners’ duplicate title from the Register of Deeds.

As it turned out, their property was no longer in their names but in the name of a corporation whose title to that property was supposed to have been registered in 2009. After vetting the records relating to that property, they discovered that their signatures in what was purportedly a deed of sale had been faked—there was not even any serious attempt at imitation! (It is common knowledge that notaries public in this country are a dime a dozen, so authentication for the bogus deed in favor of the corporation was a cinch.)

There was only one thing they could do legally: File a court case for recovery of their property. To their unspeakable shock, they were told the docket and filing fees alone for such a case, given the current market value of the property involved (now appraised at about P80 million), amounted to about P1.5 million! Their combined lifetime savings would not even come close to P500,000. And their combined monthly incomes… well, they would have to be extremely abstemious about food for their respective families for a considerable number of years to be able to save up an amount for the docket and filing fees!

And in view of the over-strict and pass-through-the-needle’s-eye stringency of the laws exempting “pauper litigants” from all court fees, the brothers eventually faced a blank wall along that route, too. (Imagine that those laws, as amended, now require that not only must the litigant himself be dirt poor—so must all the members of his immediately family! So, if he happens to have a rich brother or sister who however doesn’t give a hoot about him, he is ineligible for charity ipso facto. Whoever comprised the Congress that passed those amendments must really have a sick sense of humor!) So, what were the brothers in this case supposed to do? Rob a bank?

The gross iniquity, crying out loud, is too glaring to miss. As the brothers and their families suffer in silence, the corporate land-grabbers continue to do business as usual, secure in the thought that until the court declares their title to the subject property null and void with finality (perhaps after 15 or 20 years of litigation!), it remains indefeasible notwithstanding the obvious-to-the-naked-eye fakery. Unable to commence the recovery suit for lack of money for the docket and filing fees, the brothers failed to have any notice of lis pendens recorded in the Register of Deeds. And predictably, things got worse: the property is now in hock with a lending company whose stranglehold thereon is iron-clad.

This is one illustrative case where the panel revising the Rules of Court and the Supreme Court itself may have failed to consider when they increased the costs of seeking judicial redress of grievances. At the current rate of around P18,000 per P1 million of the market value of the property involved in litigation, those court fees are simply unconscionable and unjust in situations like the one just narrated above.

But even then, the Constitution plainly and categorically says: No one shall be denied access to the courts by reason of poverty. It is respectfully submitted that Rule 141 of the Rules of Court should be revisited once again to enable the less-moneyed citizens of this country to regain their constitutionally guaranteed access to the courts—free from the spine-crumpling burden of prohibitive fees—as a welcome alternative to their taking the law into their own hands out of sheer desperation.

In fine, with due respect, there has got to be a better way to raise the salaries of magistrates who are performing a vital role in our system of government. This is a task of legislation. Congress, the purse-keeper and money-dispenser, can perhaps re-channel the wasteful, extravagant and scandalous expenditures of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. for this purpose?

Stephen L. Monsanto is a lawyer.