Short answer. Yes, where the interference is necessary to avert an imminent danger and the threatened harm is much greater than the damage your property suffers. You cannot prohibit it while the emergency lasts, but you may demand indemnity afterwards from the person who was benefited.
What the law says
The owner of a thing has no right to prohibit the interference of another with the same, if the interference is necessary to avert an imminent danger and the threatened damage, compared to the damage arising to the owner from the interference, is much greater.
Civil Code, Article 432 — State of Necessity. Read the full provision →
Three conditions, all of them narrow
The provision suspends the owner's power to exclude, but only when everything in it lines up. The interference must be necessary to avert an imminent danger — not convenient, not prudent, and not aimed at a risk that might materialise next week. And the comparison of harms is deliberately lopsided: the threatened damage must be much greater than the damage the owner suffers from the interference. A rough balance is not enough. The law is describing a genuine emergency in which insisting on the fence would cost far more than the fence is worth.
What the owner loses, and for how long
What is taken away is the right to prohibit, and it is taken away only while the conditions hold. Someone fleeing a fire across your yard is not a trespasser in that moment; someone who crossed it last month because it was raining is. Once the danger has passed, so has the licence, and there is nothing in the provision that turns an emergency entry into a standing right of passage. Nor does it authorise more interference than the danger requires — the entry is justified by the necessity and is measured by it.
You are not expected to absorb the loss
The second sentence is the part owners rarely know about: the owner may demand from the person benefited indemnity for the damage to him. The state of necessity excuses the interference; it does not make it free. If a gate was broken, a crop trampled or a wall damaged, the person whose property or life was saved by the entry is the one who answers for that damage. Notice the wording — indemnity runs from the person benefited, which is not always the same individual as the one who did the entering.
What to do after an incident
The claim is for the damage to your property, so record it while it is fresh: photographs taken the same day, the date and hour, what was destroyed and what it cost to repair or replace. Note who entered and, separately, who was spared the greater harm, because those are the facts that identify the person who owes you. Any report made to the barangay or to responding authorities is worth keeping. Then put the demand in writing. Most disputes of this kind turn on the size of the loss rather than on whether the entry was justified.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, et al. vs. Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea, et al./Eufemia C. Cullamat, et al. vs. President Rodrigo Duterte, et al./Norkaya S. Mohamad, et al. vs. Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea, et al, G.R. No. 231658 / G.R. No. 231771 / G.R. No. 231774, July 4, 2017 — read the decision on LawPhil →