Viera Méndez v. Municipal Court of San Juan
Viera Méndez v. Municipal Court of San Juan
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
On January 1944, the plaintiff obtained in the district court a writ of certiorari annulling the decision of the municipal court which denied the issuance of the order of ejectment. The district court rested its judgment on the following grounds.: 1st, that once the plaintiff had proved at the trial that he in good faith claimed possession of the property in order to occupy it as a dwelling for himself or his family, he did not have to prove again that point in order
Section 621 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended by Act No. 14, 1941 (Spec. Sess. Laws, p. 44), provides that no proceeding shall be sustained to recover the possession of real property in the urban and rural districts of any municipality or of the Government of the Capital of Puerto Rico, where the action brought is on the ground that the contract has expired and the owner of record of the building, being a natural person, fails to establish to ■ the satisfaction of the court that he has occupied a house which is not his property nor has it been within the year preceding the commencement of the action, and seeks in good faith to recover possession of the same for the immediate and personal occupancy by himself or his family as a dwelling. The same Section provides that “In a proceeding to recover the possession of real property in said urban or rural municipal districts on the ground that the term of lease has expired, an order of ejectment shall not be issued unless the plaintiff establishes to the satisfaction of the court that the proceeding is one mentioned in the exceptions enumerated in this section.”
As we have already seen, the element of good faith in seeking to recover possession of the property for the immediate and personal occupancy by himself or his family as a dwelling must be necessarily proved in order for the action of the plaintiff to lie. Plaintiff herein, aware of that fact, made that false allegation, thereby fraudulently obtaining a judgment which otherwise he would not have obtained. Where a judgment is obtained by means of fraud, the court which entered it does not lose its jurisdiction to annul the same, even after the time for appeal has expired.
The fact that it did not appear from the certified copy of the judgment of the district court, in the proceeding against Maria widow of Sol, that the defendant occupied the apartment as her dwelling is immaterial. She could have been occupying the apartment for any other purpose, but when plaintiff claimed it in order to occupy the same for himself or his family as a dwelling, his bad faith was manifest, since at the same time he alleged in the complaint herein that he sought to recover the house occupied by defendant for the same purpose, when only one divelling is sufficient for that purpose.
Under the circumstances of this case, the municipal judge should have set aside the judgment of unlawful detainer, but his failure to do so did not deprive him of jurisdiction to direct the clerk not to issue the order of ejectment.
The judgment of the District Court of San Juan of March 2, 1944, annulling the decision of the Municipal Court which prohibited the issuance of the order of ejectment should be reversed and another entered instead denying the petition for certiorari.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.