Commercial Law•Credit Transactions•Law School Notes

Spouses Ramon Sy and Anita Ng v. Westmont Bank

August 8, 2021 by RedTint No Comments

G.R. No. 201074. October 19, 2016

MAIN TOPIC – CONTRACT OF LOAN – General Concepts

FACTS

  • Petitioners, under the trade name and style of “Moondrops General Merchandising,” obtained a loan from Westmont Bank. They signed blank forms of promissory notes, disclosure statements and continuing suretyship agreements for the purpose of securing any future indebtedness of Moondrops.
  • Westmont filed a complaint because the petitioners allegedly defaulted in the payment of the loan obligation in the amount of P4,000,000.00. Demand letter was sent to them, but it was unheeded. 
  •  Petitioners countered that Westmont, through its bank manager William Chu Lao required them to sign blank forms of promissory notes and disclosure statements, they were later informed that their loans were not approved.
  • Lao, offered to help them secure a loan through Amado Chua (Chua) and  claimed that they paid Chua the total amount of their loans. 
  • Petitioners specifically denied the genuineness and due execution of the promissory notes. The cashier’s check for the subsequent loan of P4,000,000.00 could not have been obtained from Westmont.
  • As the proceeds of the loan were not delivered by the bank, petitioners stressed that there was no perfected contract of loan. In addition, they doubt the reliability of the promissory notes as their original copies were not presented before the RTC.

ISSUE

  • Whether or not the defendants obtained loans from Westmont in the total amount of P6,429,500.00.12

HELD

  • NO. The Court finds that Westmont miserably failed to establish that it released and delivered the proceeds of the loans in the total amount of P6,429,500.00 to petitioners. Westmont could have easily presented a receipt, a ledger, a loan release manifold, or a statement of loan release to indubitably prove that the proceeds were actually released and received by petitioners.
  • Westmont failed to prove that it had delivered the loan proceeds to respondents, then there is no perfected contract of loan.
  • In civil cases, the burden of proof rests upon the plaintiff who is required to establish his case by a preponderance of evidence.
  • A simple loan is a real contract and it shall not be perfected until the delivery of the object of the contract. Necessarily, the delivery of the proceeds of the loan by the lender to the borrower is indispensable to perfect the contract of loan. Once the proceeds have been delivered, the unilateral characteristic of the contract arises and the borrower is bound to pay the lender an amount equal to that received. 

DISPOSITIVE PORTION 

WHEREFORE, the petition is GRANTED. The August 4, 2011 Decision and the March 19, 2012 Resolution of the Court of Appeals in C.A.-G.R. CV No. 90425 are hereby REVERSED and SET ASIDE. The Complaint, dated August 30, 1999, docketed as Civil Case No. 99-95945 filed before the Regional Trial Court, Branch 12, City of Manila, is DISMISSED.

SO ORDERED.

DOCTRINE

A simple loan or mutuum is a contract where one of the parties delivers to another, either money or other consumable thing, upon the condition that the same amount of the same kind and quality shall be paid.

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