JANET CARBONELL
VS. JULITA A. CARBONELL-MENDES, REPRESENTED BY HER BROTHER AND
ATTORNEY-IN-FACT, VIRGILIO A. CARBONELL, G.R. No. 205681, July 01, 2015.
“x x x.
Besides, the Court
finds no justifiable reason to deviate from the finding of the RTC and the
Court of Appeals that the signature of respondent was forged on the Deed of
Absolute Sale dated 2 April 1997, which was clearly established by the evidence
presented during the trial. Under Section 22,6 Rule 132
of the Rules of Court, among the methods of proving the genuineness of the
handwriting are through a witness familiar with such handwriting or a
comparison by the court of the questioned handwriting and the admitted genuine
specimens of the handwriting. In this case, respondent, the purported writer or
signatory to the Deed of Absolute Sale, testified that her signature was
forged. To prove the forgery, respondent presented, among others, her Canadian
and Philippine passports, driver’s license, citizenship card, and health card,
showing her genuine signature which was clearly different from the signature on
the Deed of Absolute Sale.7 Comparing the genuine signature of respondent on these documents
with her purported signature on the Deed of Absolute Sale, the RTC found
“significant differences in terms of handwriting strokes, as well as the shapes
and sizes of letters, fairly suggesting that the plaintiff [Julita A.
Carbonell-Mendes] was not the author of the questioned signature.”8 Signatures
on a questioned document may be examined by the trial court judge and compared
with the admitted genuine signatures to determine the issue of authenticity of
the contested document. As held in Spouses Estacio v. Dr. Jaranilla:9
It bears stressing
that the trial court may validly determine forgery from its own independent
examination of the documentary evidence at hand. This the trial court judge can
do without necessarily resorting to experts, especially when the question
involved is mere handwriting similarity or dissimilarity, which can be
determined by a visual comparison of specimen of the questioned signatures with
those of the currently existing ones. Section 22 of Rule 132 of the Rules of
Court explicitly authorizes the court, by itself, to make a comparison of the
disputed handwriting “with writings admitted or treated as genuine by the party
against whom the evidence is offered, or proved to be genuine to the
satisfaction of the judge.”10
X x x.”
