This case has been cited 2 times or more.
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2014-07-09 |
SERENO, C.J. |
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| Petitioners were correct when they argued that upon Macaria Berot's death on 23 June 2003, her legal personality ceased, and she could no longer be impleaded as respondent in the foreclosure suit. It is also true that her death opened to her heirs the succession of her estate, which in this case was an intestate succession. The CA, in fact, sustained petitioners' position that a deceased person's estate has no legal personality to be sued. Citing the Court's ruling in Ventura v. Militante,[13] it correctly ruled that a decedent does not have the capacity to be sued and may not be made a defendant in a case: A deceased person does not have such legal entity as is necessary to bring action so much so that a motion to substitute cannot lie and should be denied by the court. An action begun by a decedent's estate cannot be said to have been begun by a legal person, since an estate is not a legal entity; such an action is a nullity and a motion to amend the party plaintiff will not, likewise, lie, there being nothing before the court to amend. Considering that capacity to be sued is a correlative of the capacity to sue, to the same extent, a decedent does not have the capacity to be sued and may not be named a party defendant in a court action. | |||||
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2000-11-15 |
YNARES-SANTIAGO, J. |
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| Amendments to pleadings are liberally allowed in furtherance of justice, in order that every case may so far as possible be determined on its real facts, and in order to speed the trial of cases or prevent the circuitry of action and unnecessary expense.[21] The trial court, therefore, should have allowed the amendment proposed by petitioner for in so doing, it would have allowed the actual merits of the case to be speedily determined, without regard to technicalities, and in the most expeditious and inexpensive manner.[22] | |||||