A judgment is revived only when the same cannot be
enforced by motion, that is, after five years from the time it becomes
final. A revived judgment can be enforced by motion within five years
from its finality. After said five years, how may the revived judgment
be enforced? Appellee contends that by that time ten years or more would
have elapsed since the first judgment becomes final, so that an action
to enforce said judgment would then be barred by the statute of
limitations.
Appellee's theory relates the period of prescription
to the date the original judgment became final. Such a stand is
inconsistent with the accepted view that a judgment reviving a previous
one is a new and different judgment. The inconsistency becomes clearer
when we consider that the causes of action in the three cases are
different. In the original case, the action was premised on the unpaid
promissory note signed by Joaquin Bondoc in favor of the Philippine
National Bank; in the second case, the Philippine National Bank's cause
of action was the judgment rendered in Civil Case No. 8040; and in the
present case, the basis is the judgment rendered in Civil Case No.
30663. Parenthetically, even the amounts involved are different.
The source of Section 6 aforecited is Section 447 of
the Code of Civil Procedure which in turn was derived from the Code of
Civil Procedure of California. The rule followed in California in this
regard is that a proceeding by separate ordinary action to revive a
judgment is a new action rather than a continuation of the old, and
results in a new judgment constituting a new cause of action, upon which
a new period of limitations begins to run.3
The judgment in Civil Case No. 30663, which provided
the cause of action in the case at bar, was rendered on February 20,
1957 and became final in the same year. Pursuant to Article 1144(3) of
the New Civil Code the action upon such judgment must be brought within
ten years from 1957 or until 1967. The instant case instituted in the
court a quo on June 7, 1962 is well within the prescriptive period.
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