MUSTANG LUMBER v.

CA
G.R Nos. 104988, 106424, 123784
Ponente: J. Davide Jr.

FACTS:

On 1 April 1990, acting on an information that a huge stockpile of narra flitches, shorts, and
slabs were seen inside the lumberyard of the petitioner in Valenzuela, Metro Manila, DENR
organized a team of foresters and policemen and sent it to conduct surveillance at the said
lumberyard. In the course thereof, the team members saw coming out from the lumberyard
the petitioner's truck, loaded with lauan and almaciga lumber of assorted sizes and
dimensions. Since the driver could not produce the required invoices and transport
documents, the team seized the truck together with its cargo and impounded them at the
DENR compound at Visayas Avenue, Quezon City. The team was not able to gain entry into
the premises because of the refusal of the owner.
On 3 April 1990, the team was able to secure a search warrant from Executive Judge Adriano
R. Osorio of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Valenzuela, Metro Manila. By virtue thereof, the
team seized on that date from the petitioner's lumberyard four truckloads of narra shorts,
trimmings, and slabs; a negligible number of narra lumber; and approximately 200,000 board
feet of lumber and shorts of various species including almaciga and supa.
On 4 April 1990, the team returned to the premises of the petitioner's lumberyard in
Valenzuela and placed under administrative seizure the remaining stockpile of almaciga,
supa, and lauan lumber with a total volume of 311,000 board feet because the petitioner failed
to produce upon demand the corresponding certificate of lumber origin, auxiliary invoices,
tally sheets, and delivery receipts from the source of the invoices covering the lumber to
prove the legitimacy of their source and origin.
The petitioner's question the seizure contending that the possession of lumber, as opposed to
timber, is not penalized in Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, and even granting
arguendo that lumber falls within the purview of the said section, the same may not be used
in evidence against him for they were taken by virtue of an illegal seizure.

Section 68 of Presidential Decree (P.D.) No. 705, as amended, is hereby amended to read as follows:
“Section 68. Cutting, Gathering and/or collecting Timber or Other Forest Products Without License. – Any
person who shall cut, gather, collect, remove timber or other forest products from any forest land, or
timber from alienable or disposable public land, or from private land, without any authority, or possess
timber or other forest products without the legal documents as required under existing forest laws and
regulations, shall be punished with the penalties imposed under Articles 309 and 310 of the Revised Penal
Code: Provided, That in the case of partnerships, associations, or corporations, the ocers who ordered the
cutting, gathering, collection or possession shall be liable, and if such ocers are aliens, they shall, in
addition to the penalty, be deported without further proceedings on the part of the Commission on
Immigration and Deportation. “The Court shall further order the conscation in favor of the government of
the timber or any forest products cut, gathered, collected, removed, or possessed, as well as the machinery,
equipment, implements and tools illegally used in the area where the timber or forest products are found.”

ISSUE:
Whether the contention of the petitioner is correct that lumber is different from timber

HELD:
No,

The Supreme Court held that the Revised Forestry Code contains no definition of either timber
or lumber. While the former is included in forest products as defined in paragraph (q) of
Section 3, the latter is found in paragraph (aa) of the same section in the definition of
"Processing plant."
Lumber is a processed log or processed forest raw material.
The Code uses the term lumber in its ordinary or common usage. In the 1993 copyright edition
of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, lumber is defined, inter alia, as "timber or
logs after being prepared for the market."

Simply put, lumber is a processed log or timber. It is settled that in the absence of legislative
intent to the contrary, words and phrases used in a statute should be given their plain,
ordinary, and common usage meaning.
And insofar as possession of timber without the required legal documents is concerned,
Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, makes no distinction between raw or processed
timber. Neither should we.