1. Common Law & Civil Law Property * A Conversation *
Professor Kirsten Anker
Professor David Lametti
22 March, 2011

2. Common Law Property * Idiosyncrasies*
Archaic terminology
Fee simple estate, freehold tenure, seisin, feoffee, replevin, ejectment
Sources and defining property
No “owners”
Title is relative
Possession gives rights
All titles “held of” the Crown
Five dimensions of property in land
Divisions over time
Legal and equitable interests
Aboriginal rights

3. Civil Law Property : *Absolutes*
Patrimonial Rights
$$$

4. Extra-patrimonial Rights
Ownership
Real Rights
Patrimonial Rights
Personal Rights
Extra-patrimonial Rights
[Aubry v. Vice-Versa]

5. Defining Property - Caselaw
Yanner v. Eaton (1999)
The ultimate fact about property is that it does not really exist: it is mere illusion. (“native title”)
INS v. Associated Press (1918)
Property, a creation of law, does not arise from value, although exchangeable – a matter of fact. (“hot news”)
Storey-Bishoff v. Storey-Bishoff (1994)
One of the inherent qualities of property is that it may be transferred, bought, sold, exchanged, gifted or hypothecated. (“degrees as matrimonial property”)
Stewart v. The Queen (1988)
As the term "property" is simply a reference to the cluster of rights assigned to the owner, this protection [for confidential information in the commercial field] could be given in the form of proprietary rights. (“theft of information”)

6. Defining Property - Statutes
Land Titles Act
“property” means land designated as a property under subsection 141 (2) or (4)
Mortgages Act; Trespass to Property Act
(property not defined)
Conveyancing and Law of Property Act
“property” includes real and personal property, a debt, a thing in action, and any other right or interest.
Family Law Act
“property” means any interest, present or future, vested or contingent, in real or personal property

7. Defining Property - Commentaries
Blackstone 1760
Property is the ‘sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.’
Classifications: Real (corporeal, incorporeal); Personal (tangible, intangible)
Hohfeld and Honoré (following Bentham)
Person to person
Socially constructed bundles of rights
Property rights indistinct from other rights (Gray)
Both “owner” and “object” have become abstract and diffuse

8. Civil Law: Codes, Doctrine, cases

9. 947. Ownership is the right to use, enjoy and dispose of property fully and freely, subject to the limits and conditions for doing so determined by law.
Ownership may be in various modes and dismemberments.
947. La propriété est le droit d’user, de jouir et de disposer librement et complètement d’un bien, sous réserve des limites et des conditions d’exercice fixées par la loi.
Elle est susceptible de modalités et de démembrements.

10. 911. A person, alone or with others, may hold a right of ownership or other real right in a property, or have possession of the property.
A person may also hold or administer the property of others or be trustee of property appropriated to a particular purpose.
911. On peut, a l’égard d’un bien, etre tiulaire, seul ou avec d’autres, d’un droit de propriété ou d’un autre droit réel, ou encore être possesseur du bien.
On peut aussi être détenteur ou administrateur du bien d’autrui, ou être fiduciaire d’un bien affecté à une fin particulière.

11. 899. Property, whether corporeal or incorporeal, is divided into immovables and movables.
899. Les biens, tant corporels qu’incorporels, se divisent en immeubles et en meubles.

12. Where are the owners in the Common Law?
The feudal pyramid
The king as absolute lord
“Seisin” = right to enjoy returns of the land
Different kinds of “tenures”
Decline of feudalism
Tenures converted into “free and common socage”
Land granted to tenant and his heirs
The “estate” as the object of inheritance
Different slices of time possible
fee simple, fee tail, life estate, conditional estates

13. 5 Dimensions of Property in Land
Leasehold Estate
Life Estate
Fee Simple Estate
Time – 4th dimension
2 dimensions
3 dimensions
3 dimensions
Legal Interest
Equitable Interest
Equity – a second layer of estates and interests – the 5th dimension

14. Umm… The owners? The importance of possession
Multiple persons entitled to land
Disputes solved by “seisin”
Presumption that possession was legitimate
The role of writs and remedies
Writ of right
Writ of entry
Assize of novel disseissin, mort d’ancestor
Writ of ejectment (leasehold→freehold); now part of trespass
Larceny a crime against possession
“Ownership” understood variously in terms of protection, limitation and title

15. Civil Law Property Attempts to organize these impulses…
according to kinds of objects & rights
according who « owns »
according to whose rights
according to time, space

16. 976. Neighbours shall suffer the normal neighbourhood annoyances that are not beyond the limit of tolerance they owe each other, according to the nature or location of their land or local custom.
976. Les voisins doivent accepter les inconvénients normaux du voisinage qui n’excèdent pas les limites de la tolérance qu’ils doivent, suivant la nature ou la situation de leurs fonds, ou suivant les usages locaux.

17. Extra-patrimonial Rights
947
Ownership
Co-ownership [1010]
Special Modes
Superficies [1011]
Real Rights
Patrimonial Rights
Usufruct [1120]
Dismemberments
[1119]
Personal Rights
Emphyteusis [1195]
Servitude [1177]
Extra-patrimonial Rights
[Aubry v. Vice-Versa]
Innominate Real Rights?

18. Civil Law Property
Supposedly absolute, BUT perhaps not quite so …

19. 976. Neighbours shall suffer the normal neighbourhood annoyances that are not beyond the limit of tolerance they owe each other, according to the nature or location of their land or local custom.
976. Les voisins doivent accepter les inconvénients normaux du voisinage qui n’excèdent pas les limites de la tolérance qu’ils doivent, suivant la nature ou la situation de leurs fonds, ou suivant les usages locaux.

20. Civil Law Property : *Absolute?*
Limits on each form of real right
Limits on certain objects
Possession
And historical contingencies:
The Crown (and common law) in Quebec
Aboriginal « interests »: rights and title in Quebec
The modern, global context

21. Example 1 – Who “owns” the baseball? Popov v. Hayashi
“Significant but incomplete steps to achieve possession … interrupted by the unlawful acts of others [give rise to] a pre-possessory interest … a qualified right to possession.

22. Example 2 – Conditional Estates: ruling from the grave
Defeasible fee
An estate terminated before its natural end by the fulfillment of a condition
“To A provided he never marries a Roman Catholic”
Condition removed if invalid
Determinable fee
An estate limited from the outset by conditioning event
“To A for the time that she lives in Toronto”
Invalid condition voids whole grant

23. Example 3 – Quasi-public space
Harrison v. Carswell (1975)
Picketing (statutory labour right) on shopping centre sidewalk
Dixson (majority)
private property central in Canadian law
right to exclude can only be curtailed by explicit legislation
Laskin (minority)
historical purpose of trespass relates to privacy
interests of owners v members of public can be reconciled by limiting right to exclude to misbehaviour
calls up civil law abuse of rights
Statutory amendments
Charter rights
CCC v. Canada
R v. Layton

24. Example 4 – Barriere Lake: unceded Algonquin territory

25. Aboriginal rights Doctrine of continuity Three categories of colony
conquest
cession
settlement
Pre-existing rights?
“Some tribes are so low in the scale of civilization…” Re Southern Rhodesia (1919)
Must not “render [aboriginal] title conceptually in terms which are appropriate only to systems which have grown up under English law” Amodu Tijani (1921)
Which category for Canada?

26. Aboriginal rights in Quebec
R v. Adams; R v. Coté (1996)
Regardless of recognition by French regime, s.35 protects activities “central to the distinctive culture of aboriginal societies prior to contact”
Legislative infringement possible if justified
Difficult to establish commercial rights
Aboriginal title for “semi-nomadic” peoples?
Exclusive possession (Delgamuukw)
Sui generis, reconciliation of two perspectives
Regular, not occasional use
Comprehensive claim agreements since 1975
James Bay and Northern Quebec, Nunavik completed
Mi’maq, Innu in progress