In the case of Montelibano y Ramos v. La Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, 1915, the U.S Supreme Court dealt with a dispute over property rights in the Philippines. The plaintiff, Montelibano y Ramos, claimed that he had purchased land from an individual who was not its rightful owner and therefore sought to recover his money from the defendant company which had sold him this land. The defendant argued that they were protected by a Spanish law which stated that if someone bought property in good faith from someone they believed to be its owner then their purchase would be valid even if it later turned out that person wasn't actually the legal owner. However, after reviewing both Philippine and Spanish laws on this matter as well as previous court rulings related to similar cases, the Supreme Court ruled against them stating there was no such protection for buyers under these circumstances according to either country's laws or past judicial decisions.

The dissenting opinion in the case of Montelibano Y Ramos v. La Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas argued that the majority's decision was incorrect because it failed to consider important aspects of Spanish law, which were applicable at the time when the disputed contracts were made. The dissent believed that under Spanish law, a contract could be voided if there was evidence of lesion or injury, meaning one party suffered an unfair disadvantage due to unequal bargaining power or other factors. In this case, they felt that such lesion existed and thus disagreed with the majority's ruling upholding these contracts as valid and enforceable. They also took issue with how certain facts had been interpreted by both lower courts and their fellow justices on Supreme Court bench.