NPC vs CA GR No 106804 Digesto

NPC vs CA GR No. 106804

FACTS: Antonio Pobre owns a land which he developed into a resort subdivision, beneath which is thermal mineral water and steam. For one year, Pobre leased to NPC eleven lots from the approved subdivision  plan. To own own the land land for industrial industrial purposes, purposes, NPC filed filed an expropriation expropriation case against against Pobre, Pobre, during the the  pendency of which the the former dumped waste waste materials materials beyond the site agreed upon upon by the parties. parties. Then  NPC filed its second expropriation expropriation case against Pobre Pobre to acquire acquire an additional additional area area of the property. In In his motion to dismiss the complaint, Pobre prayed for just compensation of all the lots affected by NPC’s actions and for the payment of damages. But NPC itself filed a motion to dismiss the second expropriation case on the ground that NPC had found an alternative site and that NPC had already abandoned in 1981 the project within the Property due to Pobre’s opposition. The trial court ruled that because of the pollution generated by NPC’s geothermal plants NP C had rendered Pobre’s entire Property useless as a resort-subdivision. resort -subdivision. The Property has become useful only to  NPC. NPC must therefore therefore take take Pobre’s entire entire Property Property and pay pay for it. But it.  But NPC insists that it has the right to move for the automatic dismissal of its complaint, relying on Section 1, Rule 17 of the 1964 Rules of Court (the Rules in effect at that time).

ISSUE: Whether or not NPC has the right to automatically dismiss complaint for eminent domain

HELD:

In expropriation cases, there is no such th ing as the plaintiff’s matter of right to automatically to  automatically dismiss the complaint precisely because the landowner may have already suffered damages at the start of the taking. If the propriety of the taking of private property through eminent domain is subject to judicial scrutiny, the dismissal of the complaint must also pass judicial inquiry because private rights may have suffered in the meantime. The dismissal, withdrawal or abandonment of the expropriation case cannot be made arbitrarily. Section 1, Rule 17 of the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure no longer makes the dismissal of the complaint automatic. The right of the plaintiff to dismiss his action before the defendant has filed his answer or asked for summary judgment must be first confirmed by the court in an order issued by it.

(It is not Section 1, Rule 17 of the 1964 Rules of Court that is applicable to this case but Rule 67 of the same Rules, as well as jurisprudence on expropriation cases. Rule 17 referred to dismissal of civil actions in general while Rule 67 specifically governed eminent domain cases.)