The nature of judicial reconstitution proceedings is the restoration of an instrument or the reissuance of a new duplicate certificate of title which is supposed to have been lost or destroyed in its original form and condition. Its purpose is to have the title reproduced after proper proceedings in the same form they were when the loss or destruction occurred and not to pass upon the ownership of the land covered by the lost or destroyed title. Possession of a lost certificate of title is not the same as ownership of the land covered by it, and the certificate does not vest ownership but merely evinces title over a particular property. Indeed, registering land under the Torrens System does not create or vest title because registration is not a mode of acquiring ownership.
As pronounced by this Court in Lee v. Republic of the Philippines
[A] reconstitution of title is the re-issuance of a new certificate of title lost or destroyed in its original form and condition. It does not pass upon the ownership of the land covered by the lost or destroyed title. Any change in the ownership of the property must be the subject of a separate suit. Thus, although petitioners are in possession of the land, a separate proceeding is necessary to thresh out the issue of ownership of the land.
In the Heirs of De Guzman Tuazon v. Court of Appeals the Court also explained that:
[I]n x x x reconstitution under Section 109 of P.D. No. 1529 and R.A. No. 26, the nature of the action denotes a restoration of the instrument which is supposed to have been lost or destroyed in its original form and condition. The purpose of the action is merely to have the same reproduced, after proper proceedings, in the same form they were when the loss or destruction occurred, and does not pass upon the ownership of the land covered by the lost or destroyed title. It bears stressing at this point that ownership should not be confused with a certificate of title. Registering land under the Torrens System does not create or vest title because registration is not a mode of acquiring ownership. A certificate of title is merely an evidence of ownership or title over the particular property described therein. Corollarily, any question involving the issue of ownership must be threshed out in a separate suit, which is exactly what the private respondents did when they filed Civil Case No. 95-3577 [“Quieting of Title and Nullification and Cancellation of Title”] before Branch 74. The trial court will then conduct a full-blown trial wherein the parties will present their respective evidence on the issue of ownership of the subject properties to enable the court to resolve the said issue. (Heirs of Abadilla vs Galarosa, G.R. No. 149041, July 12, 2006)
