Short answer. Yes. The Code names two: the right to demand a right of way, and the right to bring an action to abate a public or private nuisance. Neither is extinguished by prescription, so no lapse of time by itself defeats them — and the list is expressly not a closed one.
What the law says
The following rights, among others specified elsewhere in this Code, are not extinguished by prescription: (1) To demand a right of way, regulated in article 649; (2) To bring an action to abate a public or private nuisance.
Civil Code, Article 1143 — Rights That Never Prescribe. Read the full provision →
Why these two and not others
Prescription works on wrongs that happened at a point in time: something was taken, breached or withheld, the clock starts, and eventually the law prefers repose to justice. Both rights on this list are different in kind, because each answers a condition that is still going on. Land that is enclosed today is enclosed again tomorrow. A nuisance that fouls the air this morning does it again this afternoon. There is no single moment for a period to run from, so the Code declines to start one.
The right of way that cannot lapse
What survives forever is the right to demand a right of way, regulated in article 649 — the demand itself, not everything attached to it. An owner whose land has been landlocked for forty years without complaint may still demand access, and the neighbour cannot answer that he waited too long. But the demand still has to satisfy Art. 649 on its own terms: enclosure, no adequate outlet, payment of proper indemnity, and isolation that is not the owner's own doing. Imprescriptible means the door stays open, not that you walk through it without proving anything.
Abating a nuisance
The second item covers an action to abate a public or private nuisance — the action to stop it. That is the part time does not touch, and it is why a factory cannot acquire a right to keep discharging simply because the neighbours put up with it for twenty years. The distinction worth holding on to is between stopping the thing and being paid for it. Abatement is what this provision preserves; a claim for the damage already suffered is an ordinary money claim, and ordinary money claims run out.
"Among others specified elsewhere"
The opening words tell you the enumeration is illustrative. Other provisions scattered through the Code make particular actions imprescriptible, and this article does not gather them. So the absence of your situation from the list of two proves nothing either way. What it does prove is worth keeping in view for practical purposes: a right that never prescribes can still become very hard to enforce, because witnesses die, boundaries shift, documents are lost, and the property may by then be in the hands of a buyer who knew nothing about any of it.
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.
- Juan B. Bañez, Jr. vs. Hon. Crisanto C. Concepcion, et al, G.R. No. 159508, August 29, 2012 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1143 — Rights That Never Prescribe
- Civil Code, Article 649 — The Compulsory Right of Way