Common Law & Civil Law Property * A Conversation *

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. 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. 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. 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.

10. 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. 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.

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

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.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. 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.

17. 947 Ownership Co-ownership [1010] Special Modes Superficies [1011] Real Rights Patrimonial Rights Usufruct [1120] Dismemberments [1119] Emphyteusis [1195] Personal Rights 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.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. 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.

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