News Update SolGen asks SC en banc to hear UP Technohub case

The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court en banc to hear a case – now pending before the SC’s Second Division – involving the University of the Philippines (UP)-Ayala Land Technohub, along Commonwealth Ave., Quezon City. The case involves the erroneous issuance in favor of a private individual of a transfer certificate of title (TCT) over the land upon which stands the UP-North Science and Technology Park, popularly known as UP-Ayala Land Technohub. The land registered under the name of UP and the state university’s indefeasible title to the property has been upheld several times by the Supreme Court itself. The high court’s Second Division had earlier denied the OSG’s motion for referral to the Supreme Court en banc, or to the whole 15-justice court instead of simply a division composed of only five justices. This has led to the OSG filing a motion for reconsideration on Tuesday. The OSG had argued in its earlier motion dated August 3, 2011 — for referral to the Supreme Court en banc — the case is of “paramount importance to the country” and “merits the attention of all fifteen sitting justices of the Supreme Court, considering that the case involves a large tract of government land reserved for none other than the national university and represents substantial business investments from various private partners including the Ayala Land, Inc.” The case stems from a 1997 petition for reconstitution of TCT over the land which was filed by a Segundina Rosario (now deceased) at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 101. Rosario had claimed that her TCT was among those burned in a fire in 1988, and for this reason she sought a reconstitution or reconstruction of her alleged lost certificate. Despite the fact that the land she had claimed overlaps land covered by TCT Nos. 192689 and 192687 issued in the name of UP — and despite her use of documentary evidence the OSG says is “fraudulent” — the RTC ruled in Rosario’s favor. The Court of Appeals later affirmed the trial court's decision. The Supreme Court’s own internal rules provide that the court en banc shall act on cases where a doctrine previously laid down by the SC could possibly be modified or reversed, or on cases where the subject matter has a huge financial impact on businesses or a community. The OSG maintains that the case involving the science and technology park meets both of these criteria. Zuellgate Corporation, which has substituted Segundina Rosario in the case, opposed the OSG’s previous motion for referral. The UP Ayala Land Technohub is a 37.5-hectare technology park inside the UP Diliman campus under a 25-year lease, and is one of two technology parks inside the university managed by the Ayala Group. It was patterned after well-known and successful technology parks abroad, such as the Tsukuba Science City at University of Tsukuba, the Singapore Science Park at the National University of Singapore, and the Haidan Science Park at the University of Beijing, as well as Silicon Valley at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and Route 128 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. — MRT/VS,