G.R. No.

L-48321

August 31, 1946

OH CHO, applicant-appellee,
vs.
THE DIRECTOR OF LANDS, oppositor-appellant.

FACTS:
This is an appeal from a judgment decreeing the registration of a residential lot located in the
municipality of Guinayangan, Province of Tayabas in the name of the applicant.
The opposition of the Director of Lands is based on the applicant's lack of title to the lot, and on his
disqualification, as alien, from acquiring lands of the public domain.
The applicant, who is an alien, and his predecessors in interest have been in open, continuous,
exclusive and notorious possession of the lot from 1880 to filing of the application for registration on
January 17, 1940.

ISSUE:
Whether or not the applicant is entitled to decree or registration of the lot.

HELD:
Application for registration DISMISSED.
Subject land belongs to the public domain
The applicant failed to show that he or any of his predecessors in interest had acquired the lot from
the Government, either by purchase or by grant, under the laws, orders and decrease promulgated
by the Spanish Government in the Philippines, or by possessory information under the Mortgaged
Law (section 19, Act 496).
All lands that were not acquired from the Government, either by purchase or by grant belong to the
public domain. An exception to the rule would be any land that should have been in the possession
of an occupant and of his predecessors in interest since time immemorial, for such possession
would justify the presumption that the land had never been part of the public domain or that it had
been a private property even before the Spanish conquest. The applicant does not come under the
exception, for the earliest possession of the lot by his first predecessors in interest begun in 1880.
The applicant's immediate did not have any vested right in the lot amounting to the title which was
transmissible to the applicant. The only right, if it may thus be called, is their possession of the lot

which, tacked to that of their predecessors in interest, may be availed of by a qualified person to
apply for its registration but not by a person as the applicant who is disqualified.