Sy Joc Lieng v. Sy Quia, 228 U.S. 335 (1913)

228 U.S.
335
33 S.Ct. 514
57 L.Ed. 862
SY JOC LIENG et al., Appts.,

v.
GREGORIO SY QUIA et al.
No. 177.
Argued March 7 and 10, 1913.
Decided April 14, 1913.
Messrs. Jackson H. Ralston, W. Morgan Shuster, Clement L. Bouve,

Frederick L. Siddons, and William E. Richardson for appellants.
Messrs. James H. Blount and Antonio M. Opisso for appellees.
Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the opinion of the court:
This appeal brings under review a decree of the supreme court of the
Philippines in a suit involving conflicting claims to the estate of a Chinese
merchant domiciled in those islands, and there known as Vicente Romero Sy
Quia, who died intestate at Manila in 1894. The appellants, who were plaintiffs
in the court of first instance, claim as descendants of a marriage between the
intestate and Yap Puan Niu, a Chinese woman, said to have been contracted in
1847 at Am Thau, in the province of Amoy, China. The appellees claim as the
descendants of a marriage with Petronila Encarnacion, a Filipino woman
celebrated in 1853 at Vigan, in the Philippines. The principal question here, as
in the insular courts is whether the proof sufficiently established the Chinese
marriage. On this the insular courts differed, the court of first instance finding
the marriage adequately proved, and the supreme court, one justice dissenting,
holding the other way. 16 Phil. Rep. 137. Before coming to the evidence
directly addressed to this question it will be well to state the facts about which
there is no dispute.
Sy Quia was born at Am Thau, China, in 1822, and went to the Philippines at
the age of twelve. At first he was located in Manila, but at some time before
1852 went to Vigan and entered the service of a merchant at an annual salary of
200 pesos. During that year he was converted to the Catholic faith and was
baptized in the parish church. The next year he married Petronila, the banns
being regularly published and the marriage publicly solemnized according to
the rites of the church, as a preliminary to which he affirmed under oath, and
the civil and ecclesiastical authorities certified after inquiry, that he was then
unmarried. Shortly after the marriage he and Petronila took up their permanent
home in Manila. They were then without any particular property other than
5,000 pesos which she received from her mother and brought into the conjugal
society. He became a merchant, and through their united efforts they
accumulated real and personal property amounting at the time of his death to
upwards of 600,000 pesos. They lived in a manner becoming the marital state
and were universally recognized as husband band and wife. Three sons and two
daughters were born of the marriage. One of the daughters married and
predeceased her father, leaving a son surviving. The other died after the father,
leaving the mother as her only heir. Following Sy Quia's death the widow
administered the estate, with the aid of the sons until 1900, when through
appropriate judicial proceedings the property was distributed among the
widow, sons, and grandson as the persons rightly entitled thereto. The present
suit was brought in 1905, more than half a century after the marriage, and then
for the first time was its validity or its good faith as to either spouse brought in
question,a fact which is of particular significance, first, because Yap Puan
Niu, the alleged Chinese wife, visited in Manila at the home of a brother of Sy
Quia twice during the life of the latter, and, second, because two of the
plaintiffs were adults living in Manila at the time of Sy Quia's death and during
the eleven years intervening before the suit was brought.
3
There was testimony, taken by way of depositions in China, tending to show

that Sy Quia returned from the Philippines to Am Thau in 1847, when he was
twenty-five years old; that during that year he married Yap Puan Niu, the
marriage being properly arranged and celebrated; that he remained at Am Thau
three or four years, during which two sons were born of this marriage; that he
then returned to the Philippines and Yap Puan Niu continued to reside at Am
Thau, dying there in 1891; that the four plaintiffs are the only living
descendants of this marriage, two being grandsons, one a granddaughter, and
one a great-grandson. Six of the witnesses in China testified directly to the
marriage, and their testimony, if standing alone, would be quite persuasive of
its occurrence, notwithstanding some discrepancies in their statements. But this
testimony did not stand alone. It was met and contradicted by that of several
Philippino witnesses, taken mostly by deposition, to the effect that they had
known Sy Quia in Vigan for some years before his marriage to Petronila in
1853, and that he was living there during the period when, according to the
opposing testimony, he married Yap Puan Niu and remained in China. One of
these witnesses was an aged man, who testified with certainty that he was a
student at Manila between 1839 and 1845 and knew Sy Quia there; that he, the
witness, was married at Vigan in 1847, and that Sy Quia was living there then.
Others of these witnesses give kindred reasons for their ability to speak with
precision concerning Sy Quia's presence at Vigan during the period in question.
Still other witnesses gave testimony more or less corroborative of these
opposing theories, but it was less direct and was also contradictory.
4
In addition to this conflicting testimony there was this situation, as before

indicated: The Philippine marriage and the forty years of uninterrupted marital
life following it were not only established but conceded. While Sy Quia lived
the validity of that marriage passed unchallenged and no right was asserted
under the one alleged to have occurred in China. More than this, the right of the
widow and children of the Philippine marriage to the property acquired during
its existence went unquestioned for eleven years after his death and for five
years after the judicial distribution of the property.
In these circumstances every presumption was in favor of the validity and good
faith of the Philippine marriage, and sound reason required that it be not
impugned and discredited through the alleged prior marriage save upon proof
so clear, strong, and unequivocal as to produce a moral conviction of the
existence of that impediment. The conflicting testimony, isolatedly considered,
did not measure up to this standard, and clearly it did not do so if proper regard
was had for the probative force of the conduct of all the parties concerned
during the many intervening years. Then, too, the lips of Sy Quia and Yap Puan
Niu had been sealed by death, and this, with the long interval of time, gave
unusual opportunity for the use of fabricated testimony, the untruth of which it
would be difficult to expose.
Giving due effect to these considerations, we cannot say that the Supreme Court
of the Philippines erred in holding that the Chinese marriage was not
adequately proved. Indeed, we regard the evidence as not producing a moral
conviction of the existence of that marriage, but as leaving the issue in serious
doubt. The decree is accordingly affirmed.

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228 U.S.

SY JOC LIENG et al., Appts.,

Messrs. Jackson H. Ralston, W. Morgan Shuster, Clement L. Bouve,

There was testimony, taken by way of depositions in China, tending to show

In addition to this conflicting testimony there was this situation, as before

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