PO YENG CHEO vs.

LIM KA YAM

FACTS:

Po Yeng Cheo, alleged sole owner of a business formerly conducted in the City of Manila under the
style of Kwong Cheong, as managing partner in said business and to recover from him its properties
and assets.
The defendant having died during the pendency of the cause in the court below and the death
suggested of record, his administrator, one Lim Yock Tock, was required to appear and make defense.
In a decision the Honorable C. A, found that the plaintiff was entitled to an accounting from Lim Ka
Yam, the original defendant, as manager of the business already reffered to, and he accordingly
required Lim Yock Tock, as administrator, to present a liquidation of said business within a stated time.
This order bore no substantial fruit, for the reason that Lim Yock Tock personally knew nothing about
the aforesaid business (which had ceased operation more than ten years previously) and was
apparently unable to find any books or documents that could shed any real light on its transaction.
However, he did submit to the court a paper written by Lim Ka Yam in life purporting to give, with
vague and uncertain details, a history of the formation of the Kwong Cheong Tay and some account of
its disruption and cessation from business in 1910.

ISSUE: Whether or not Lim Yock Tock has a right to interfere with the right the rights and deceased partner.

RULINGS: No.

In the first place, it is well settled that when a member of a mercantile partnership dies, the duty of liquidating
its affair devolves upon the surviving member, or members, of the firm, not upon the legal representative of
the deceased partner. (Wahl vs. Donaldson Sim & Co., 5 Phil., 11; Sugo and Shibata vs. Green, 6 Phil., 744) And
the same rule must be equally applicable to a civil partnership clothed with the form of a commercial
association (art. 1670, Civil Code; Lichauco vs. Lichauco, 33 Phil., 350) Upon the death of Lim Ka Yam it therefore
became the duty of his surviving associates to take the proper steps to settle the affairs of the firm, and any
claim against him, or his estate, for a sum of money due to the partnership by reason of any misappropriation
of its funds by him, or for damages resulting from his wrongful acts as manager, should be prosecuted against
his estate in administration in the manner pointed out in sections 686 to 701, inclusive, of the Code of Civil
Procedure..