Felipe de Guzman vs Manuel de Santos y Cabrera

G.R No. 6606: 2 December 1911

Facts:

The appellant filed a petition in the Land Court, case no. 5706, asking for the registration
of the parcel of land situated in Calle Santa Maria, in Tondo, Manila bounded by the east by the
said Calle Santa Maria; on the north right side by the property of one Francisco Toribio and
Lucio Buzon; on the South with the Property of Isabel Tambueco and Miguel Gatpatan. The
parties to this action are adjacent property owners and from the record it appears that there is a
strip of 154 sqm which is included within the alleged boundaries of both litigants. This small
parcel in dispute lies north of the land of Santos and south of that of Guzman. The court then
found that this disputed tract was not included within the lands of Guzman and was the option
that his southern line has been advanced over on to Santos. The courses of the boundary lines are
not given but only distances, with the bounding limit stated in general terms. The petitioner files
as his Exhibit D a certified transcript taken from the registrars book. From the descriptions
provided it can be seen that the land has the form of an irregular quadrilateral. There is a defect
in the description and said defects and erroneous statements with reference to the description of
the petitioners of the land in the old deeds are urged by the oppositor as making it impossible to
know what is the true description of the land claimed and hence impossible to register.

Issue:

Whether the Land in dispute could not be registered because of error of description?

Held:

Errors of description which appear in an old recorded title and which have been
successively repeated in subsequent transfers do not affect the validity of the registered title
when it is shown that the land sought to be inscribed is exactly the same as that included in the
old deeds. When according to an old registered title, the land appears to be slightly greater in
area than it actually is, such discrepancy does not operate to vitiate or weaken the title this
inscribed.