ALLIED AGRI-BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT V. CA (REMEDIAL)

The petition must fail. The allegation that cherry Valley being an unlicensed foreign corporation lacked the legal capacity to institute the suit in the trial court for the recovery of money claims from petitioner cannot be sustained. In fact, petitioner is estopped from challenging or questioning the personality of a corporation after having acknowledged the same by entering into a contract with it. The doctrine of lack of capacity to sue or failure of a foreign corporation to acquire a local license was never intended to favor domestic corporations who enter into solitary transactions with unwary foreign firms and then repudiate their obligations simply because the latter are not licensed to do business in this country.

Petitioner cannot also successfully argue that its failure to answer the request for admission did not result in its admission of the matters stated in the request. Section 1 of Rule 26 of the Rules of Court provides:

Section 1. REQUEST FOR ADMISSION - at any time after issues have been joined, a party may file and serve upon any other party a written request for the admission by the latter of the genuineness of any material and relevant document described in and exhibited with the request or of the truth of any material and relevant matter of fact set forth in the request. Copies of the documents shall be delivered with the request unless copies have already been furnished.

The purpose of the rule governing requests for admission of facts and genuineness of documents is to expedite trial and to relieve parties of the costs of proving facts whichi will not be disputed on trial and the truth of which can be ascertained by reasonable inquiry.

The burden of affirmative action is on the party upon whom notice is served to avoid the admission rather than upon the party seeking the admission. Hence, when petitioner failed to reply to a request to admit, it may not argue that the adverse party has the burden of proving the facts sought to be admitted. Petitioner's silence is an admission of the facts stated in the request.

SC finds that the motion for summary judgment filed by respondent cherry Valley on the ground that there were mo questions of fact in issue since the material allegations of the complaint were not disputed was correctly granted by the trial court. It is a settled rule that SUMMARY JUDGMENT may be granted if the facts which stand admitted by reason of a party's failure to deny statements contained in a request for admission show that no material issue of fact exists. By its failure to answer the other party's request for admission, petitioner had admitted all the material facts necessary for judgment against itself.