To appropriate someone else’s real estate by prescription, using it in full view for thirty years, one can be in bad faith but one must not show it.
This is what emerges from a judgment of the Court of Cassation delivered on February 29 which found in the wrong the one who claimed ownership of a neighboring plot.
For more than thirty years, this neighbor had allowed his visitors to park their cars on land that did not belong to him. The conditions are therefore met, he said, to be recognized as owner, these conditions being to have used this place in a peaceful, public, unequivocal manner and as owner. And only the owner can authorize someone to park their car, he insisted.
You can become an owner even in bad faith
But the judges considered these circumstances insufficient because this neighbor, twice, had proposed acquiring this land. Therefore, the sole use of this plot and the fact that the neighbors believed the owner who was only a usurper are not enough, they said.
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One can become an owner in this way, even in bad faith, that is to say knowing perfectly well that the land belongs to someone else, as this neighbor claimed. But, concluded the Court of Cassation, we cannot claim ownership in this way when twice, as this person did, we proposed to acquire it. Because we thus admitted not being the owner and knowing the identity of the latter. Therefore, the use was not made as owner and a legal condition was missing.
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