Banco Filipino has announced the hotels foreclosure and its plan to put it on the auction block on Sept. 27.
In a six-page decision, RTC Branch 33 Judge Wenceslao Ibabao, however, said the foreclosure proceedings were "untimely."
The hotel stands on a 9,673-square-meter lot which the Pamintuan Enterprises mortgaged to Banco Filipino.
The hotel has over 200 employees.
Ibabao blocked the hotels sale after Marilou Aldevera, clerk of court and ex-officio provincial sheriff, referred to him the letters of the hotels lawyers calling for the cancellation and withdrawal of the notice of extrajudicial foreclosure and sale.
Apo Views lawyers argued that the planned foreclosure violates an existing writ of preliminary injunction which RTC Branch 8 issued on June 29, 1999.
Ibabao supported this view, saying the injunction "did not appear to have already been dissolved."
The writ was issued based on a civil case pending with RTC Branch 15 which Ibabao said should first be resolved. In the case, the hotel questioned the validity of promissory notes which Banco Filipino claimed it had to honor.