warehouseman shall deliver the goods to the person making such payment if he is a person entitled, under the provisions of this Act, to the possession of the goods on payment of charges thereon. Otherwise the warehouseman shall retain possession of the goods according to the terms of the original contract of deposit. (Sec. 33, Act. 2137.) HOW THE LIEN MAY BE LOST. A warehouseman loses his lien upon goods (a) By surrendering possession thereof, or (b) By refusing to deliver the goods when a demand is made with which he is bound to comply under the provisions of this Act. (Sec. 29, Act 2137.) Both under the American law and the Civil Law, the right of taking and retaining the effects of the lessee found in the leased premises for the payment of rent is a right to be exercised only through the ministry of justice. The right which the lessor had upon default of payment of rent to enter the leased premises, vi et armis, and take hold of whatever property is distrainable thus taking the law into his own hands is a thing of the past. Such right was recognized under the Common law. Such measure, however, has become unpopular in the United States; mesne process o attainment has taken the place of so-called Distress of the Common Law. (Jones -on Liens, sec. 540.) In the United States, at present, in twenty-one states of the Union, a lien is given to landlords by statute. IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. A landlord's lien over the effects of the lessee found in the premises for rents due is not recognized in the Philippine Islands. A claim may be made that by virtue of article 1922, paragraph 7, of the Civil Code, the lessor has a lien upon the property in the premises for the amount due him. That article is as follows: "Art. 1922. With regard to specified personal property of the debtor, the following are preferred: ༦ 7. Credits for rents and leases for one year with regard to the personal property of the lessee existing on the thing leased and on the fruits thereof." But the construction of this article was before our Supreme Court in the case of Peña v. Mitchell (9 Phil. Rep., 595), and it was there said: "We do not think," said the Supreme Court, speaking of Title XVII (Book IV) of the Civil Code, which is devoted exclusively to the "concurence and preference of credits," "that these rules for the classification of credits create, or were intended to create, a lien in favor of the creditor upon the property of the debtor, which attaches to such property and gives to the creditor a special interest therein, other than the mere right of preference in the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of such property in the course of judicial proceedings wherein the creditor is a property party and duly asserts his right to a preference." Again our Supreme Court, in the case of McMicking v. Kimura, 12 Phil. 98, declared: "The claim of Paterno falls in the first class, as a claim with special preference, being covered by article 1922, par. 7, of the Civil Code. The goods. from which the fund in question proceeded being upon the property in question and still belonging to the debtors, Paterno had a special preference in the distribution of such fund, his claim being for the rent of the property. (Peña v. Mitchell, 9 Phil. Rep., 587; Macke v. Rubert, 11 Phil. Rep., 480." Said right of preference is "a consequence of the life of the building." (Bonell's. Commentaries on paragraph 7 of Article 1922 of the Civil Code; 12 Manresa 702.) Mr. Troplong says that there is a TACIT PLEDGE in numerous transactions. The CONTRACT OF LEASE is given as an example. The fruits of the crop and the furniture and instruments of husbandry in the rented house or farm are a tacit pledge, INHERENT IN THE CONTRACT OF LEASE and give the lessor the right to be paid by preference from the proceeds of these things. He adds-THE THINGS IN QUESTION ARE CONTAINED IN THE LEASED PREMISES; THE LESSOR, THEREFORE, DETAINS THEM IN SOME SORT IN DETAINING AND POSSESSING THE PREMISES WHICH CONTAINS THEM. The denomination of a tacit pledge to designate the right of preference referred is hardly a correct one. The law permits parties to enter into contractual relations with one another, but it does not contract for them. The law therefore does not itself pledge the property of the debtor to the creditor. It only submits it to the power of the latter, in certain cases and for certain purposes. MEANS ADOPTED TO PROTECT LESSOR. It is competent for the landlord and tenant to create a lien upon the tenant's property by contract, so as to insure the payment of the rents. Our Supreme Court, speaking through its Chief Justice, in the case of Meyers v. Thein, 15 Phil. Rep. 310, said: "The registration of a chattel mortgage, executed in accordance with Act No. 1508, is not in violation of the right of possession, supposed to have been acquired ex lege by the lessor over the furniture existing upon the leased premises, because no such right of possession is granted by law to the lessor over the personal property of the lessee upon the estate leased; it is subject only to the payment of rent for one year, A CONDITION WHICH MAY BECOME VAIN AND ILLUSORY BY A TRANSACTION LIKE THE ONE IN QUESTION, to wit, when the lessee executed a mortgage upon such personal property in favor of a third person, in the same manner as he could have previously performed these or other acts of disposal in respect thereto inasmuch as his right to dispose of the same was not then, and is not now limited by reason of their being in a leased building; against this contingency the lessor should take proper precautions in order to ensure the payment of rent by MEANS OF AN EXPRESS LIEN THEREON, since the personality is merely affected by a tacit lien under the circumstance presumed by the law, to wit, that it belongs to the lessor and continues upon the premises and is liableonly for the rent for one year.” (To be continued) PHILIPPINE LAW JOURNAL Published monthly, August to April inclusive, during the academic year, by the alumni and students of the College of Law, University of the Philippines. Quintin Paredes, Professorial Lecturer on Criminal Law. Enrique Altavas, Lecturer on Land Registration and Mortgages. SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN NOTE AND COMMENT RAMÓN R. SAN JOSÉ, Senior A VOICE OUT OF THE EAST A LETTER OF Our Former DEAN IN ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW, MARCH, 1917 TO THE EDITOR OF "ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW": Editor The vaguely applied term "the Orient" is popularly conceived to represent a vast and sleepy region somewhere east of Suez, backward in all branches of learning. It could of course be easily demonstrated that around the cycle of world events, many times the West has merely followed in the footsteps of the East and rediscovered what has been known for centuries to their brethren on the other side of the globe. Nevertheless, those whose good fortune it is to live in the Orient are still thought of as benighted and unfortunate beings. It is, therefore, with some pleasure that I make known to you that for once at least we can prove that the East has gotten ahead of the West. I refer to the action of Northwestern University in instituting a four-year law course, described by Dean Wigmore on page 362 of the issue of Illinois Law Review for December, 1916. He states that "Northwestern University in this November (1916) prescribes four years of law studies (88 units) for the law degree; the rule to be effective from September, 1918." The College of Law, University of the Philippines, has had an optional fouryear course from the date of its establishment on January 12, 1911. In March, 1916, the College of Law, University of the Philippines, provided that, beginning with the academic year 1917-1918, July 1, 1917, the three-year course should be discontinued and the four-year course made fundamental with 110 units required for graduation. Although it is extremely difficult for us slow mortals in the Orient to keep up with the rapid pace set by those progressives in the teaching of the law, Pound, Wigmore, Bates, and others, I think that for once we may exult over the fact that we are ahead of them and are the first law school under the American flag (so far as we know) to establish the four-year law course predicated on two years of College preparation. We also humbly believe that we have a few other ideas in force in our law school to which others will come in time. Just as one example, proved successful rot as a matter of theory but as a matter of practice, we insist on two introductory courses in the first semester of the Freshman year, one known as Institutes of Roman Law introducing the civil law, and the other for want of a better name entitled Elementary Law introducing the common law. These two courses together give the new students a systematic idea and classification of the law, and in all the courses which follow, this systematic idea is gone back to and closely adhered to. Then in the last semester of the senior year we give courses under the name, for want of a better description, of Code Review-Civil Law, Mercantile Law, Remedial Law, and Public Law,— which bring together again in systematic order all the previous courses of the curriculum and review them for the student just previous to the granting of his diploma. While it is an excellent thing to make the student reason, as under the Harvard case system, while it is an excellent thing to make his course practical, as under the Michigan practice court system, and while it is an excellent thing to give him a wide acquaintance with jurisprudence, as under the Northwestern system, is it not also just as valuable for him to be introduced to the law scientifically—not thrown in to sink or swim-to study the law logically and in order, and to leave the law, know it as a science? Very truly yours, GEORGE A. MALCOLM, (Our learned correspondent could also, of course, have called attention to a celebrated oriental example in a far-removed century (for Constantinople was officially more oriental in the 500's than Manila is today)—the five-year law course of Roman law: (see Justinian's "Constitutio Omnem").—Ed.) |