LANDBANK V. SPOUSES ORILLA (REMEDIAL)

EXECUTION OF A JUDGMENT PENDING APPEAL is governed by Section 2(a) of Rule 39 of the Rules of Court. discretionary execution may only issue upon good reasons to be stated in the special order after due hearing. As provided above, execution of the judgment or final order pending appeal is discretionary. As an exception to the rule that only a final judgment may be executed, it must be strictly construed. Thus, execution pending appeal should not be granted routinely but only in extraordinary circumstances.

The Rules of Court does not enumerate the circumstances which would justify the execution of the judgment or decision pending appeal. However, we have held that "good reasons" consist of compelling or superior circumstances demanding urgency which will outweigh the injury or damages suffered should the losing party secure a reversal of the judgment or final order. The existence of good reasons is what confers discretionary power on a court to issue a writ of execution pending appeal. These reasons must be stated in the order granting the same. Unless they are divulged, it would be difficult to determine whether judicial discretion has been properly exercised.

In this case, do good reasons exist to justify the grant by the SAC of the motion for execution pending appeal? The answer is a resounding YES.

The expropriation of private property under RA 6657 is a revolutionary kind of expropriation being a means to obtain social justice by distributing land to the farmers, envisioning freedom from the bondage to the land they actually till. As an exercise of police power, it puts the landowner, not the government, in a situation where the odds are practically against him. He cannot resist it. His only consolation is that he can negotiate for the amount of compensation to be paid for the property taken by the government. As expected, the landowner will exercise this right to the hilt, subject to the limitation that he can only be entitled to "just compensation." Clearly therefore, by rejecting and disputing the valuation of the DAR, the landowner is merely exercising his right to seek just compensation.

The SAC found that the valuation made by the petitioner, and affirmed by DAR, was unjustly way below the fair valuation of the landholding at the time of its taking by the DAR. The SAC, mindful also of the advanced age of the respondents at the time of the presentation of evidence for the determination of just compensation, deemed it proper to grant their motion for execution pending appeal with the objective of ensuring "prompt payment" of just compensation.

Contrary to the view of the petitioner, "prompt payment" of just compensation is not satisfied by the mere deposit with any accessible bank of the provisional compensation determined by it or by the DAR, and its subsequent release to the landowner after compliance with the legal requirements.

The concept of just compensation embraces not only the correct determination of the amount to be paid to the owners of the land, but also payment within a reasonable time from its taking. Without prompt payment, compensation cannot be considered "just" inasmuch as the property owner is made to suffer the consequences of being immediately deprived of his land while being made to wait for a decade or more before actually receiving the amount necessary to cope with his loss.