Pagán Esmoris v. Registrar of Property of Mayagüez
This text of 71 P.R. 448 (Pagán Esmoris v. Registrar of Property of Mayagüez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The appellant is the owner of an urban property, recorded n the Registry of Property of Mayagüez, and encumbered by a mortgage recorded since April 28, 1925 in favor of Jovita Esmoris Graña, an incapacitated person. The filing of a complaint to recover said mortgage or the existence of such lien has not been recorded in the registry.
Relying on § 388-B of the Mortgage Law 1 the appellant requested the Registrar, pursuant to the last para[450]*450graph of the afore-mentioned Section, to cancel said lien, it the ■ absence of the above-mentioned circumstances and because more than twenty years have elapsed since its constitution.
Notwithstanding the clear language of the last paragraph of § 388-B, the Registrar refused the cancellation. H( maintains that in order to do so — even after the first yeai said Article is in force — it is necessary to notify the creditor for otherwise, she would be. deprived of her property without the due process of law.
Perhaps it might have been deprivation of property without due process of law if the Registrar had ordered th« cancellation of mortgages which were constituted twenty years prior to the effective date of the Act, without giving the creditor reasonable time for filing the complaint or foi proving the existence of the lien. Precisely in order to make the Act constitutional, the creditor was allowed the term oi one year, counted from the effectiveness of the Act, to comply with said requisite. In the present case when § 388-1 of the Mortgage Law was passed in 1923, the mortgagi [451]*451sought to be canceled had not yet been constituted. Hence the mortgage creditor, upon constituting the mortgage, knew that it could be cancelled at the expiration of the twenty years pursuant to the last paragraph of § 338-B. Under these circumstances, it cannot be held that the creditor might be deprived of her property without due process of law, because she was not notified as is only required by the Act when the cancellation is sought before the lapse of one year since its approval.
The other ground for the note is that, according to § 40 of the Code of Civil Procedure,2 the limitation term does not run against the creditor because she is an incapacitated person. Again we do not agree with the Registrar. Article 388-B approved after § 40 of the Code of Civil Procedure, includes among its provisions the minors and incompetent and consequently, § 40 is not applicable to this special situation provided by the Act. The purpose of § 388-B of the Mortgage Law is to eliminate from the Registry those liens which because of the time elapsed since their constitution, should be assumed not to exist. Cf. Berio v. Registrar, 35 P.R.R. 398.
The note appealed from will be reversed and the mortgage cancelled.
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71 P.R. 448, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pagan-esmoris-v-registrar-of-property-of-mayaguez-prsupreme-1950.