Case No. ##: Victorias Planters Association, Inc., v. Victorias Milling Co., Inc.

, Chapter I: Nemo Tenetur ad Impossibilia

G.R. No. L-6648, 25 July 1955 Facts: The petitioners Victorias Planters Association, Inc. and North Negros Planters Association, Inc. are non-stock corporations and are composed of sugar cane planters having been established as the representative entities of the numerous sugar cane planters in the districts of Victorias, Manapla and Cadiz. The sugar cane productions were milled by the respondent corporation. Petitioners are the ones in charge of taking up with the respondent corporation problems which may come up. At various dates, the sugarcane planters executed identical milling contracts setting forth the terms and conditions which the sugar central North Negros Sugar Co. Inc. would mill the sugar produced by the sugar cane planters. Because of the Japanese occupation, the North Negros Sugar Co., Inc. did not reconstruct its destroyed central and it had made arrangements with the respondent Victorias Milling Co., Inc. for said respondent corporation to mill the sugarcane produced by the planters of Manapla and Cadiz holding milling contracts with it. When the planters-members of the North Negros Planters Association, Inc. considered that the stipulated 30-year period of their milling contracts had already expired and terminated and the planters-members of the Victorias Planters Association, Inc. likewise considered the stipulated 30-year period of their milling contracts as having likewise expired and terminated. Respondent has refused to accept the fact that the 30-year period has expired. They contend that the 30 years stipulated in the contracts referred to 30 years of milling not 30 years in time. They contend that as there was no milling during 4 years of the recent war and 2 years of reconstruction, 6 years of service still has to be rendered by petitioners. Issues: Whether or not respondent is correct. Held: The trial court rendered judgment, which the Supreme Court affirmed.

Wherefore, the Court renders judgment in favor of the petitioners and against the respondent and declares that the milling contracts executed between the sugar cane planters of Victorias, Manapla and Cadiz, Negros Occidental, and the respondent corporation or its predecessors-in-interest, the North Negros Sugar Co., Inc., expired and terminated upon the lapse of the therein stipulated 30-year period, and that respondent corporation is not entitled to claim any extension. Ratio: The reason the planters failed to deliver the sugar cane was the war or a fortuitious event. The appellant ceased to run its mill due to the same cause. Fortuitious event relieves the obligor from fulfilling a contractual obligation. The fact that the contracts make reference to "first milling" does not make the period of thirty years one of thirty milling years. The seventh paragraph of Annex "C", not found in the earlier contracts (Annexes "A", "B", and "B-1"), quoted by the appellant in its brief, where the parties stipulated that in the event of flood, typhoon, earthquake, or other force majeure, war, insurrection, civil commotion, organized strike, etc., the contract shall be deemed suspended during said period, does not mean that the happening of any of those events stops the running of the period agreed upon. It only relieves the parties from the fulfillment of their respective obligations during that time. To require the planters to deliver the sugar cane which they failed to deliver during the four years of the Japanese occupation and the two years after liberation when the mill was being rebuilt is to demand from the obligors the fulfillment of an obligation which was impossible of performance at the time it became due. Nemo tenetur ad impossibilia.

Chan / Statutory Construction