THE city government has finally acquired clean titles covering the lots on which the former MC Adore Hotel stands.

According to City Legal Officer George Mejia. all the four titles of the lots in question have already been registered in the name of Dagupan City before the city’s Register of Deeds.

These are Transfer Certificates of Title Numbers 85543, 85544, 85545 and 85546, all under Entry No.100961/T31107 of the Register of Deeds.

However, the adverse claim to the property by the late Archbishop Federico Limon is still carried in all the four new titles issued and certified by the Register of Deeds.

With these claims noted at the back of the title, legal questions may still arise once the city government decides to sell the property or introduce permanent improvements thereon.

The past city administration of Mayor Benjamin Lim ignored the adverse claim filed by the archdiocese and proceeded to buy the property by installment.

The MC Adore property was bought by the Lim administration for P50 million over a five-year payment scheme from the Privatization Monitoring Office (PMO), ostensibly to be converted into the new Dagupan City Hall.

When the new city administration of Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. took over, it inquired on the status of the MC Adore property and found it was the subject of “lis pendens” (notice of pending litigation), adverse claim and had incurred tax deficiencies with the Bureau of InternalRevenue.

At the initiative of Mejia, he already caused the removal of the annotation of “lis pendens” in the titles after it was verified that the case was already dismissed long time ago by the then Court of First Instance.

The tax encumbrance attached to the property was also lifted after the city government paid P27,000 in accumulated taxes to the BIR recently.

Mejia said the “lis pendens” case was filed by the late Archbishop Limon supposedly seeking to stop the Development Bank of the Philippines from foreclosing the property, which was used by then MC Adore owner Modesta Sabiano as collateral to secure loan.

But a subsequent verification showed that the case had long been dismissed by then CFI Judge Felicidad Carandang Villalon, which was the reason why DBP was able to foreclose the property.

To remove the remaining adverse claim of the late archbishop, Mejia filed a petition for the cancellation of this claim before Branch 40 of the Regional Trial Court which was subsequently granted by RTC Judge Robert Rudio.

Mejia said that the city government can now decide what to do with the property given the clean titles to the MC Adore property, notwithstanding the notation for a possible adverse claim.

But both Mayor Fernandez and Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez already indicated that the property will definitely not be developed into a new city hall since the original plan would further compound traffic situation in the area. -LM

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