“What the frog is going on??” I demanded to know. I knew there wasn’t a fire—because if there was, this has got to be the sweetest-smelling building fire I’d ever been in: peppermint!
“This is Shaq’s fault sir!” Miss Pinky Maglia Rosa reported, “his vape pen locked up!”
“His WHAT pen??” I said as I stubbed my toes into the side of the lectern in the front of the class.
“I’m sooooo sorry, sir!” Mr Abraham Mabagsik—Shaq I christened him—profusely apologized, “my vape pen was ‘low-batt,’ sir, but as soon as slipped the new coin battery in, it just started spewing all this vapor, the activator switch got stuck. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take long now. I haven’t replaced my flavor cartridge in two days…”
Sometimes I have to remind myself it’s a whole different world.
In the 80’s and 90’s we used to stagger into law class half-inebriated so we could be bold (or actually shameless) to recite before our “terror professor” for the evening. Each evening was a different one.
Occasionally, one of them came to class FULLY inebriated himself. Have you ever heard a drunk law student carry on a conversation with a drunk law professor? The comedy is not to be believed. NOT to be believed.
Today’s millennials don’t do alcohol and don’t do drugs (contrary to the grim picture President Duterte loved to paint). They do VAPE, e-cigarettes that were like electronic lollipops. It boasts of being an “off-ramp” for people who are trying to quit smoking. I think it’s an “on-ramp” for people who are trying to START.
At least Shaq was right, his flavor cartridge was almost spent, the air began to clear up after 10 minutes. He was still red-faced though, “I’m really sorry, classmates. I’m trying to quit!”
“You’ve never heard of a nicotine patch?” I said, “you stick it on your arm, it releases small doses of nicotine into your bloodstream at regular intervals until you don’t crave for the taste of tobacco anymore.”
“Don’t believe him, sir,” Miss Ursula Bahaghari interjected maliciously, “he just vapes because he thinks it makes him look cool. His problem is low self-esteem, that’s why we gave him an ‘approval patch’ last December!”
“An ‘approval patch’??” I wondered.
“It releases small doses of approval at regular intervals until he no longer craves for approval, sir” Miss Ursula explained, throwing the whole class in fits of guffaw.
“Anyway, I’m getting rid of both, sir,” Shaq said, “I’m throwing away the vape and stripping away the approval patch. I am healed! I’ve been delivered!!!”
“Haa….llelujah!! Haaaa…llelujah!!!” his classmates all stood up and in mock-choir gesture began singing Mendelssohn’s classic concerto.
I banged the blackboard to refocus the class.
“Funny you should mention getting rid of your digital phallic symbol, Mr. Mabagsik,” I said, “because that’s one of the absolute rights of ownership of a property. Where’s Miss Mona Lee So?”
“Present, sir!”
“Put away the VOGUE magazine, Miss Mona, and tell your classmates, what are the FOUR ABSOLUTE RIGHTS of an owner.”
“Uhh…jus utendi, jus abutendi, jus disponendi and jus vindicandi, sir.”
“In English, please…” I said.
“Uhh…the right to use, the right to abuse or destroy, the right to dispose away and the right to recover if wrongfully deprived.”
I can always count on the old gal during recitation. Younger law students struggle with short attention spans when reading long cases. But my two senior citizens, Miss Mona Lee So and Mr. Oskie Cannell, EAT long cases for breakfast.
“Give us an example, Oskie,” I called on the Toronto Raptor from Canada.
“Well, sir, I own a house, sir—”
“You JUST BOUGHT one??” I interrupted him, because I know it hasn’t been—what, five years?—since he came home as a balikbayan.
“I have actually been saving up for years,” he explained, “and I have been hesitating to buy property in Baguio for sometime now. Two or three Panagbengas later, and all that traffic and congestion during the last holiday season, and I finally made up my mind while driving along the TPLEX coming home from a trip to Manila,” he said.
“Riiiiight…” I said, still trying to make any sense of everything he said, “go back to ‘two or three Panagbengas later’” I said.
“Well, around Panagbenga every year, Baguio becomes such a boiling pot. Baguio is such a premier destination for tourists now, the last ten people I ran into today were tourists. In fact, I now only ever run into Baguio people here in class! And all that traffic and congestion, my God!!”” Oskie said, flailing his arms for emphasis.
“Strong reasons to settle down here, huh?” I still didn’t quite get his logic.
“Well, it made me realize one thing, sir. God hasn’t stopped making PEOPLE to this day….but He stopped making LAND a loooong time ago. So I better buy up while the limited supply lasts. So I bought 250 square meters and built an A-framed Canadian log cottage. I own it free and clear, that makes me ABSOLUTE OWNER.”
“Would you sell it?” I asked.
“I suppose if the price is right, sir. Every house in the whole world is ‘for sale’ right now—if the price is right. Make me an offer I can’t refuse and I’ll sign on the dotted line!” Oskie beamed.
“And that demonstrates what right?”
“Right to use and dispose, sir “
“And what about ‘jus abutendi’ have you ever done anything injurious to your property?” I followed up.
“Well, the other day I overbaked my lasagna in the oven watching the Golden State Warriors eat the dust of the New Jersey Nets. I came pretty darn close to burning down my kitchen!” Oskie said in horror.
"Well, if you did it should be a comforting thought to know that you cannot be charged with arson for burning down your own house, so long as your wife wasn’t inside at the time,” I said, throwing the class into chuckles.
“Where’s Mr. Roberto Sigalot,” I looked for my student who stays in his parents’ timeshare condo.
“Here, sir!”
“Robert, illustrate ‘jus vindicandi’ for us, will you.”
“Sir, about five years ago my parents forgot to pay the realty tax on the condo I’m using now. The notice of assessment was tossed away by the security guard at the lobby who thought it was just another one of those promo leaflets. So the City published the notice and levied on the condo’s title. I was the one who discovered the oversight so I rushed to City Hall in time to stop the pre-auction. So I was able to recover for my parents because they always remained the registered owners even after the property became tax-delinquent. We cleared the delinquency within the redemption period—”
“And so your parents said, ‘good work, you little smartass!’ and gave the condo to you?”
“And the rest is history as they say, sir!” Roberto said. For some reason his classmates started lightly clapping and he turned around and took an exaggerated bow.
“Well, that’s ‘right of vindication’ for you,” I summarized, “culminating in the right to blackmail your parents for lucrative gain.” The class laughs.
“Miss Pinky, these four absolute rights of an owner—do they apply to any property?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. In fact, they apply to ALL properties, tangible and intangible. Even rights! Rights can be transferred for valuable consideration, rights can be waived, and rights can be reconstituted or revived in proper cases, if you somehow lost them,” the girl who is always dressed in all-pink said.
“So you’re saying that ‘OWNERSHIP’ is an exacting legal term that carries some very specific implications?”
“Very specific AND indispensable legal requirements, sir. If you cannot exercise ANY ONE of these rights over a thing, then you’re simply NOT its absolute owner under the law, no matter what you say!”
“I see.” I said, then paused for a long while.
“Now, Miss Pinky, if a group of people—let’s say a group of consumers—went around saying they were the OWNERS of an electric cooperative in Tawi-Tawi, or Batanes or some other God-forsaken place, what would THAT mean then?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” Miss Pinky halted, “I’m pretty sure it means they care about it, they want it to succeed, they treat is as their own, they’ll do almost anything to protect it, they invest their lives, blood, tears, toil and sweat on it—they could mean a lot things,” the girl answered.
“My question is, can they be considered ABSOLUTE OWNERS of that cooperative?”
“I don’t really think so, sir. I mean they can use its service, but they can’t SELL it. And if its management does decide to sell it, then any one consumer alone, or even all the consumers combined don’t have legal standing to recover it—and they won’t have enough money to buy it back, to begin with.”
“Hmmm…you have a point there.,” I conceded, “so these self-proclaimed ‘owners’ are using the term OWNERSHIP in a totally different context then?”
“They can only mean ‘ownership’ in a poetic way, you know, as a pure metaphor, a figure of speech, sir,” Miss Pinky said.
“But the term, as they use it, carries no legal weight?”
“A couple of grams, maybe, sir, good enough to spice up press releases, and statements and promo leaflets and such.”
“Can I use it as an argument in court?” I asked finally.
“You’ll get laughed out of court, I’m afraid, sir.”*
