Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. v. Santos, supra note 55 at 236, citing Ancheta v. Metropolitan Bank and Trust Company, Inc., 507 Phil. 161 (2005).
Finally, as to whether respondent's assent to the initial partition agreement serves as an admission against interest, in that the respondent is deemed to have admitted the existence of co-ownership between him and petitioner, we rule in the negative.
Sec. 26. Admissions of a party. – The act, declaration or omission of a party as to a relevant fact may be given in evidence against him.
To be admissible, an admission must (a) involve matters of fact, and not of law; (b) be categorical and definite; (c) be knowingly and voluntarily made; and (d) be adverse to the admitter's interests, otherwise it would be self-serving and inadmissible.
"Bad faith" connotes not only bad judgment or negligence, but also a dishonest purpose, a conscious wrongdoing, or a breach of duty amounting to fraud.
"Gross negligence," on the other hand, is characterized by the want of even slight care, acting or omitting to act in a situation where there is a duty to act, not inadvertently but willfully and intentionally, with a conscious indifference to consequences as far as other persons are concerned.
Gross negligence connotes want of care in the performance of one's duties, while habitual neglect implies repeated failure to perform one's duties for a period of time, depending on the circumstances. The single or isolated act of negligence does not constitute a just cause for the dismissal of an employee.
By this argument, the LBP effectively attempts to make a distinction between the just compensation given to landowners whose properties are taken for the government's agrarian reform program and properties taken for other public purposes. This perceived distinction, however, is misplaced and is more apparent than real.
Section 4. The State shall, by law, undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farm workers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farm workers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof. To this end, the State shall encourage and undertake the just distribution of all agricultural lands, subject to such priorities and reasonable retention limits as the Congress may prescribe, taking into account ecological, developmental, or equity considerations, and subject to the payment of just compensation.
[T]he term "just compensation" is used in several parts of the Constitution, and, therefore, it must have a uniform meaning. It cannot have in one part a meaning different from that which appears in the other portion. If, after all, the party whose property is taken will receive the real value of the property on just compensation, that is good enough.
In fact, while a proposal was made during the deliberations of the 1986 Constitutional Commission to give a lower market price per square meter for larger tracts of land, the Commission never intended to give agricultural landowners less than just compensation in the expropriation of property for agrarian reform purposes.