REMEDY = REFORMATION :check:
(REQ: MEETING OF MINDS)
Although both parties agreed to transfer one-hectare real property, they failed to include in the written document a sufficient description of the property to convey. This error is not one for nullification of the instrument but only for reformation.
Article 1359 of the Civil Code provides:
When, there having been a meeting of the minds of the parties to a contract, their true intention is not expressed in the instrument purporting to embody the agreement by reason of mistake, fraud, inequitable conduct or accident, one of the parties may ask for the reformation of the instrument to the end that such true intention may be expressed.
If mistake, fraud, inequitable conduct, or accident has prevented a meeting of the minds of the parties, the proper remedy is not reformation of the instrument but annulment of the contract.
Reformation is a remedy in equity whereby a written instrument is made or construed so as to express or conform to the real intention of the parties where some error or mistake has been committed. 7
In granting reformation, the remedy in equity is not making a new contract for the parties, but establishing and perpetuating the real contract between the parties which, under the technical rules of law, could not be enforced but for such reformation.
||| (Quiros v. Arjona, G.R. No. 158901, [March 9, 2004], 468 PHIL 1000-1011)