Hull v. District Court of San Juan
Hull v. District Court of San Juan
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
American Colonial Bank and Trust Company of Porto Pico, a corporation, in its capacity as administrator of the .Catholic Church in Puerto Rico, on February 17, 1931,
Two errors of procedure are set up in the petition for certiorari, and the first of these is predicated on the overruling by the court of the demurrer for failure of the defendant to make an appearance in support thereof.
According to sections 196 and 198 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a demurrer to the complaint raises an issue of law which must be tried by the court, unless it is referred upon consent; and section 199 provides that issues of law must be disposed of before issues of fact are decided. Under these provisions, therefore, a demurrer must be decided by the court and should not be overruled on the ground that the party interposing the same has not appeared to support it. In Anderson v. Fulton County Home Builders, 92 S. E. 934; Vaughan v. Farmers’ & Merchants’ Bank, 93 S. E. 228, and Porter v. Parker, 126 S. E. 381, all decided by the Supreme Court of Georgia, it has been held that a demurrer must be disposed of although the demurrant or Ms counsel should fail to appear in court. In the first of those cases it was said: “The failure of the defendant to appear would not authorize the dismissal of a demurrer. ...” To overrule a demurrer for failure of the party to appear in support thereof is tantamount to its dismissal without considering it. However, the error of the lower court on tMs point is not
It is also alleged in the petition herein that the defendant set up in the lower court as a ground for demurrer the failure to state in the complaint facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action, and that the complaint can not be amended because the American Colonial Bank and Trust Company of Porto Pico is not the real party in interest in accordance with the doctrine laid down in J. Ochoa & Bro. v. José González Clemente, & Co., 29 P.R.R. 948; and that the overruling of such objection violates section 51 of the Code of Civil Procedure, providing that every action must be exercised in the name of the real party in interest, and constitutes the other error of procedure urged.
What is sought by the foregoing ground of the petition is that we review the ruling on the said demurrer within the special proceeding in certiorari.
In Rodríguez v. Sepulveda, 19 P.R.R. 1107, we have said that the overruling or sustaining of a demurrer can not be pleaded as an error of procedure in a petition for a writ of certiorari; and in Succession of Rodriguez v. Alfaro, 22 P.R.R. 169, we held that certiorari is not the proper proceeding for determining whether a complaint is sufficient to support a judgment for the plaintiff and for setting aside the said judgment on the ground of the insufficiency of that pleading, unless a question of jurisdiction should be involved; and that the sufficiency or insufficiency of the complaint to support a judgment for plaintiff is a question reviewable by appeal and not by certiorari.
Also, we have declared in Sánchez v. Cuevas Zequeira, 23 P.R.R. 47, 51, that it has been held repeatedly by the courts in the continental United States and by this Court that as certiorari is an extraordinary remedy, it does not lie when there is another adequate, speedy, and efficient remedy in the ordinary course of law. In the instant case an appeal from the judgment of dispossession entered was available and such remedy is an adequate, speedy, and efficient one, since it may be brought in the short period of five days and the question raised by the certiorari herein in connection with the overruling of the demurrer might have been submitted and determined within such appeal; and the fact that it is provided by section 12 of the Unlawful Detainer Act that whenever the action of unlawful detainer is founded' upon the nonpayment of the amounts agreed upon, the defendant shall be denied the right of appeal unless he deposits in the office of the clerk of the court the amount due as the price up to the date of the judgment, is not a valid reason for substituting the extraordinary remedy of certiorari for the ordinary remedy of appeal, even though the plaintiff may withdraw the amount so deposited. The issuance of writs of certiorari by this Court should not prevail over the remedy by appeal granted by law, unless there is involved a grave error of procedure, which does not exist here.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, inasmuch as the statutory period for taking an appeal from the judgment is five days and the original record of the proceedings in the lower court was forwarded to us on the last day available for taking the appeal, and also in view of the fact that the defendant may
At the trial it was shown that the plaintiff is a corporation organized under the laws of this Island; that the Eoman Catholic Apostolic Church in Puerto Eico is the record owner of the house which is the object of the dispossession proceedings, located in the city of San Juan; that by public deed executed before a notary the Eight Eeverend Bishop of the Diocese of San Juan, Puerto Eico, Monsignor Edwin V. Byrne, granted the management of all the real property owned by that Church to the corporation American Colonial Bank and Trust Company of Porto Eico with power, among others, to lease the same, collect all rents thereof, and dispossess for nonpayment of rent or nonperformance of stipulated conditions any tenant, lessee, or occupant. Also a witness, an employee of the plaintiff corporation, testified, according to the opinion filed by the lower court in support of its judgment, that the right-hand portion of the lower story of the said house had been leased to the defendant for a rental of .$125 monthly, and that since the middle of November, 1929, the defendant has not paid any rent and is now owing the sum of $1,866:66, and that all efforts made by the witness to collect this sum have been unsuccessful.
According to section 1 of the Unlawful Detainer Act of 1905, the action of unlawful detainer may be commenced by the owners of property, usufructuaries thereof, or by any other person or persons entitled to the enjoyment of such property, or by persons claiming under them. The expression used in the act, “or by any ether person or persons entitled to the enjoyment of such property,” refers to those persons who, although not owners or usufructuaries, hold
It follows from the foregoing that the corporation Amer
The writ of certiorari issued in this case must be discharged.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.