G.R. No. L-13334; March 18, 1919
LEONCIO ZARATE, applicant-appellant, vs. THE DIRECTOR OF LANDS, objector-appellee.

FACTS:
Leoncio Zarate applied for registration of title to certain lands. In a prior decision (Zarate vs. Director of Lands, 34 Phil. 416), the Supreme Court ruled that Zarate had the right to register title to all lands in his application, except a portion claimed as a homestead by Apolonio Gamido. The Court ordered that Gamido’s homestead be excluded from Zarate’s registration provided the Court of Land Registration found that Gamido had obtained a patent for said land; otherwise, title should be registered in favor of Zarate for all the lands. On remand, the Court of First Instance of Nueva Ecija found that a homestead patent had indeed been issued to Apolonio Gamido and consequently ordered the exclusion of that portion from Zarate’s registration. Zarate appealed this order.

ISSUE:
Whether the Court of First Instance correctly applied the Supreme Court’s prior decision by excluding Gamido’s homestead from Zarate’s registration upon finding that a homestead patent had been issued.

RULING:
Yes. The Supreme Court affirmed the order of the Court of First Instance. The Court applied the doctrine of the “law of the case,” which holds that when an appellate court has once declared the law in a case, that declaration continues to be the law of that case in all subsequent proceedings. The prior decision in Zarate vs. Director of Lands expressly conditioned the exclusion of Gamido’s homestead on the issuance of a patent. Since the lower court found that such a patent had been issued, it was bound to follow the mandate of the prior decision. The Court noted that while the legal doctrine stated in the prior decision regarding the force of a homestead patent (equating it to a Torrens title) had been modified by later jurisprudence, the “law of the case” principle prevented the reopening or reexamination of the rule already laid down for this specific litigation. The issuance of the patent conclusively vested title in Gamido, and Zarate’s application could not prevail over it. The judgment was affirmed with costs against appellant Zarate.

Separate Concurring Opinion (Torres, J., with Araullo, J., concurring):
Justice Torres concurred in the result but on a different ground. He stated that it was not proven that the land occupied by Apolonio Gamido was Zarate’s property, and since the land was not public land, it could not be the object of a homestead application. Therefore, the appealed judgment should be affirmed.