ESTOPPEL AND OBJECTIONS TO JURISDICTION

It is crucial for a court to have jurisdiction over the subject matter of a case. Otherwise, all proceedings and the decision that will eventually be rendered will be null and void.

Therefore, if a court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter, the case may be dismissed anytime, upon motion by any party, or by the court motu proprio (on its own).

However, if a party invokes the subject matter jurisdiction of a court, and relies upon it for 15 years, he cannot turn around on appeal and insist that the court has no subject matter jurisdiction just because the case was decided against him. This is the ruling in the case of Serafin Tijam, et al vs. Magdaleno Sibonghanoy, et al, GR No. L-21450, April 15, 1968:

As already stated, the action was commenced in the Court of First Instance of Cebu on July 19, 1948, that is, almost fifteen years before the Surety filed its motion to dismiss on January 12, 1963 raising the question of lack of jurisdiction for the first time.

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A party may be estopped or barred from raising a question in different ways and for different reasons. Thus we speak of estoppel in pais, or estoppel by deed or by record, and of estoppel by laches.

Laches, in a general sense is failure or neglect, for an unreasonable and unexplained length of time, to do that which, by exercising due diligence, could or should have been done earlier; it is negligence or omission to assert a right within a reasonable time, warranting a presumption that the party entitled to assert it either has abandoned it or declined to assert it.

The doctrine of laches or of "stale demands" is based upon grounds of public policy which requires, for the peace of society, the discouragement of stale claims and, unlike the statute of limitations, is not a mere question of time but is principally a question of the inequity or unfairness of permitting a right or claim to be enforced or asserted.

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The facts of this case show that from the time the Surety became a quasi-party on July 31, 1948, it could have raised the question of the lack of jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance of Cebu to take cognizance of the present action by reason of the sum of money involved which, according to the law then in force, was within the original exclusive jurisdiction of inferior courts. It failed to do so. Instead, at several stages of the proceedings in the court a quo as well as in the Court of Appeals, it invoked the jurisdiction of said courts to obtain affirmative relief and submitted its case for a final adjudication on the merits. It was only after an adverse decision was rendered by the Court of Appeals that it finally woke up to raise the question of jurisdiction. Were we to sanction such conduct on its part, We would in effect be declaring as useless all the proceedings had in the present case since it was commenced on July 19, 1948 and compel the judgment creditors to go up their Calvary once more. The inequity and unfairness of this is not only patent but revolting.