Inverse Condemnation Proceedings

The action to recover just compensation from the State or its expropriating agency differs from the action for damages. The former, also known as inverse condemnation, has the objective to recover the value of property taken in fact by the governmental defendant, even though no formal exercise of the power of eminent domain has been attempted by the taking agency.

We rule that the reckoning value is the value at the time of the filing of the complaint, as the RTC provided in its decision. Compensation that is reckoned on the market value prevailing at the time either when NPC entered or when it completed the tunnel, as NPC submits, would not be just, for it would compound the gross unfairness already caused to the owners by NPC’s entering without the intention of formally expropriating the land, and without the prior knowledge and consent of the Heirs of Macabangkit. NPC’s entry denied elementary due process of law to the owners since then until the owners commenced the inverse condemnation proceedings. The Court is more concerned with the necessity to prevent NPC from unjustly profiting from its deliberate acts of denying due process of law to the owners. As a measure of simple justice and ordinary fairness to them, therefore, reckoning just compensation on the value at the time the owners commenced these inverse condemnation proceedings is entirely warranted (National Power Corporation Vs. Heirs of Macabangkit Sangkay, namely: Cebu, Batowa-an, et al., all surnamed Macabangkit, G.R. No. 165828. August 24, 2011).