Short answer. That period is not counted against you. Article 1154 provides that the time during which the obligee was prevented by a fortuitous event from enforcing his right is not reckoned against him. What has to be shown is prevention, rather than difficulty or general disruption.
What the law says
The period during which the obligee was prevented by a fortuitous event from enforcing his right is not reckoned against him.
Civil Code, Article 1154 — Fortuitous Events Suspend the Period. Read the full provision →
The relief is a subtraction, not an extension
Read the mechanism carefully. The article does not grant a fresh period and does not move a deadline; it takes a stretch of time out of the count, because that period is not reckoned against him. So the calculation becomes the original period less the days during which you were prevented, and the answer depends entirely on how precisely those days can be identified. A claimant who says a disaster delayed him has said nothing the article can use. A claimant who can say from which date to which date he was prevented has an argument.
“Prevented” is a strong word
It is doing the heavy lifting here, and it means more than inconvenienced. Roads impassable, offices and courts closed, records destroyed, an area sealed off — those are the shape of prevention. Being displaced, distracted, short of money or occupied with rebuilding is real hardship, but it is not the same thing, and a claim built on general disruption is unlikely to hold. Be honest about which of the two describes your situation before relying on the article, because the other side will be reading the same word.
The event itself must be fortuitous
Article 1174 supplies the Code's sense of it: events which could not be foreseen, or which, though foreseen, were inevitable. A typhoon making landfall over your province plainly qualifies. A storm season known to arrive every year does not automatically excuse a failure to act during the months when nothing at all was happening. The article addresses the interval in which enforcement was actually impossible, not the whole of a difficult period in your life surrounding it.
Build it out of records, not recollection
Suspension notices and issuances closing the courts or offices in your locality, declarations covering the area, and the dates on each of them. Evidence of your own position during those days: where you were, what was destroyed, what could not be obtained. Then the ordinary chronology — when the right accrued, when the period would otherwise have expired, and what falls in between. Present it as an arithmetic problem, because that is exactly what the article turns it into.
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.
- Sps. Cesar A. Larrobis, Jr., et al. vs. Philippine Veterans Bank, G.R. No. 135706, October 1, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Alfonso T. Yuchengco, vs. Republic of the Philippines, PCGG, Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos, Prime Holdings, Inc., Estate of Ramon U. Cojuangco and Imelda O. Cojuangco, G.R. No. 131127, June 8, 2000 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1174 — Fortuitous Events
- Civil Code, Article 1155 — The Three Ways to Interrupt Prescription