FACTS:Standard Oil sued the 5 debtors for payment, including the appellant Vicente Villanueva who acted as surety to the loan. The CFI of Manila ordered the defendants to pay jointly and severally to the plaintiffs SOCNY. While the judgment was in the course of execution, Elisa Villanueva, wife of Vicente appeared and alleged that her husband was declared insane on July 24, 1909, and that on Oct. 11, she was authorized by the court as guardian to institute the proper legal proceedings for the annulment of several bonds given by her husband while in a state of insanity.
ISSUES:
1. Whether or not suffering from monomania of wealth necessarily warrants the conclusion that the person does not have capacity to act.
2. Whether or not the appellant, was incapable of entering into contract at the time the bond was executed on December 15, 1908.
RATIO:
Capacity to act must be supposed to attach to a person who has not previously been declared incapable, and such capacity is presumed to continue so long as the contrary be not proved, that is, that at the moment of his acting he was incapable, crazy, insane, or out his mind: which, in the opinion of this court, has not been proved in this case.
The court affirmed the trial court decision that Villanueva possessed the capacity to act. The SC held that there is no evidence to warrant the conclusion, in a judicial decision, that a person suffering from monomania of wealth is really insane and therefore is deranged and incapable of binding himself in a contract. From the testimony of his wife, it seemed that Vicente has the liberty to go wherever he wished, that he had property of his own and was not deprived of its management, as well as the fact that he had never squandered any large sum of money.
As for the 2nd issue, there was no direct proof that showed that at the date of the giving of the bond, December 15, 1908, the appellant was incapable of acting because of insanity. The witnesses who as physicians, testified that they observed insane periods in Villanueva twice prior to 1903, once on 1908, but none at the time of the execution of the said bond on December 15, 1908. It was also shown that the wife never before sought to legally deprive her husband management over his estate knowing full well that he was insane.
