Property

Question 1

Classification of Property

Answer 1

Things are divided into common, public, and private; corporals and incorporeal; and movables and immovables

Question 2

Common Things

Answer 2

Common things may not be owned by anyone and may be used freely by everyone in the manner that nature intended.

e.g. the air and high seas

Question 3

Public Things

Answer 3

Public things are vested the state or one of its political subdivisions in its PUBLIC CAPACITY.

Use of public things is open to all, but may be restricted for the public’s benefit.

Include - Navigable waters, the territorial sea, seashore, highways, streets, and public squares.

Public things are inalienable.

Question 4

Private things

Answer 4

Private things are owned by private individuals or by the state or one of its political subdivisions in its PRIVATE CAPACITY.

Anything that is not common or public is private.

Private things are susceptible to alienation.

Question 5

Navigability of Waterbodies.

Answer 5

All natural navigable bodies of water are owned by the state as public things, and their use is free to all. If it is navigable in fact, it is navigable in law.

Generally, a body of water is navigable if it is susceptible to commercial use. The body of water need not be currently navigates; it only needs to be capable of being so used.

Question 6

Navigable Canals

Answer 6

A canal build with private funds on private land is a private thing, and public use can be effectively enjoined.

Even if public water is diverted to the canal, its ownership remains private.

Only natural navigable water bodies are public things.

Question 7

High Seas

Answer 7

The high was are a common thing.

Question 8

Territorial Sea

Answer 8

The territorial sea is” (i) the Gulf of Mexico within the territorial limits of the State of Louisiana; (ii) Lake Pontchartrain; and (iii) under the arms of the sea doctrine, those bodies of water in the vicinity of the open gulf that are directly overflowed by the tides.

The territorial sea is a public thing

Question 9

Seashore

Answer 9

Seashore space of land over which the waters of the sea spread in the higher tide during the winter season.

The seashore is a public thing. The state’s ownership extends to that land normally covered by the waters of the Gulf during the high tides of winter season.

Question 10

Navigable Rivers and Streams

Answer 10

The waters and bottoms of natural navigable water bodes are public things.

Question 11

River and Stream BEDS

Answer 11

The state owns the beds of navigable rivers and streams to the ordinary low water mark.

Question 12

River and Stream BANKS

Answer 12

The band is the land between the ordinary high and low watermark. Nevertheless, when there is a levee established according to law, it establishes the bank.

Question 13

Private ownership of BANKS

Answer 13

the banks of navigable rivers and streams are private things subject to limited public use.

Question 14

Public Use of BANKS

Answer 14

Public use must be incidental to navigation of the stream.

e.g. Mooring a Ship. Not Commercial property.

Question 15

Other non-navigable Rivers and Streams

Answer 15

The WATERS of non-navigable rivers and streams are a public thing, but the BEDS of non-navigable rivers and streams are privately owned to the middle of the stream.

Question 16

LAKES

Answer 16

The state owned the waters and bottoms of natural navigable lakes in LA. The state’s ownership of natural navigable water bodies that are not rivers is not limited to the land lying below the ordinary low water mark, since the definition of “bank” applies only to the banks of rivers. Consequently, the state’s ownership of natural lakes extends to the ordinary high water mark.

Question 17

Classifying water bodies

Answer 17

Important to determine whether the water body is naturally navigable AND whether it is a river or lake.

To distinguish, Courts consider 4 factors.

1) size and shape
2) depth
3) history, and
4) current

Question 18

Accretion, Alluvion, and Dereliction.

Answer 18

Alluvion and dereliction that form along the banks of a river or stream belong to the riparian land owner.

Accretion and dereliction that form along a body of water the IS NOT a river or a stream belong to the state (including lakes and the sea.)

Question 19

Accretion

Answer 19

The slow and imperceptible deposit of soil on land abutting a body of water

Question 20

Alluvion

Answer 20

The accretion that forms successively and imperceptibly on a bank of a river or stream.

Question 21

Dereliction

Answer 21

The successive, imperceptible, and permanent receding of water from the bank of a river or stream.

Not merely seasonal

Question 22

Division of Alluvion

Answer 22

If alluvion forms in from of the property of several owners, each owner is entitled to a fair proportion of the sea of the alluvion and a fair proportion of the new frontage, depending on the relative values of the frontage and acreage.

Question 23

Erosion

Answer 23

Occurs when land subsides, resulting in one dry land being permanently submerged into the river bed.

When erosion occurs in any type of navigable water body, the state gains ownership of the submerged land.

Question 24

Avulsion

Answer 24

If an identifiable piece of ground is moved from one place to another by the “sudden action” of the water of a river or stream, the original owner may claim it.

Suit myst be brought within a year, or later, if the owner of the bank to which the land has become untied has not taken possession.

Question 25

Change of Course

Answer 25

When a stream changes course, all who lost land in the process will be able to take from the abandoned riverbed in proportion to the land lost.

Question 26

Roads

Answer 26

Generally - Roads may be public or private

Question 27

Public Roads

Answer 27

A public road may either be owned by the public or privately owned and subject to public use

Question 28

Private Roads

Answer 28

not subject to public use

Question 29

Dedication of Roads

Answer 29

Private property may be donated fro public use through dedication.

1) Formal Dedication
2) Statutory Dedication
3) Tacit Dedication
4) Implied Dedication

Question 30

Formal Dedication

Answer 30

Valid donation through a WRITTEN ACT

Question 31

Statutory dedication

Answer 31

most common.

SUBSTANTIAL COMPLIANCE with the statute, which requires the recordation of a map or plat that describes land and dedicates it to public use.

Question 32

Tacit Dedication

Answer 32

A governing authority maintains a road for more than three years.

Question 33

Implied Dedication.

Answer 33

Common law doctrine recognized by LA.

Requires the owner’s plain intent to dedicated the road and the public’s clear inter to accepts.

Mere tolerance of public uses does not give rise to implied dedication.

Question 34

Incorporeal Things

Answer 34

Things with no body that are comprehended sole by the understanding.

e. g. - Rights of inheritance, servitudes, obligations, and property actions.
i. e. possessory and petitory actions

Question 35

Rights of incorporeal.

Answer 35

Can be movable or immovable.

Rights that apply to immovables are incorporeal immovables.

e.g. mineral servitudes, mineral royalties, and minera leases.

Rights and action that apply to movables are incorporeal movables.

e.g. usufruct over a vehicle.

Interest in a juridical person, such a corporation or a partnership, are movable even if the juridical person owns immovables.

Question 36

Corporeal Things

Answer 36

Things that have a body and can be felt or touched.

Corporeal movables are things animate or inanimate that have a body and can be moved or move normally from place to place.

Question 37

Immovables

Answer 37

Subject to the public records doctrine, under which any transfer or encumbrance of an immovable must be recorded to affect third parties.

Question 38

Component part

Answer 38

is a thing that is so closely connected to another thing that it take its classification form that there thing that to which it is connected. .

The requisite connection may be physical but need not always be.

Things always Classified as Immovables

1) Land,
2) Buildings,
3) Standing timber,
4) integral parts, and
5) permanent attachments are always classified as immovables.

Question 39

Land

Answer 39

tracts of land with their component parts are immovable.

Question 40

Buildings

Answer 40

ALWAYS immovable.

When there is NO unity of ownership between the ground and the building, the building is a separate immovable and is not a component part of the land.

When there IS unity of ownership between the ground and the building, the building is still an immovable because it is a component part of a tract of land.

Question 41

Definition of difficulty in distinguishing buildings

Answer 41

Difficulty often Aries in distinguishing building from other construction permanently attached to the ground, which receives different legal treatment.

Several criterial are relevant in determined whether a structure is a building; whether it is to be inhabited by people, its cost, its size, its permanence, and prevailing notion s of what constitutes a building.

Question 42

Standing Timber

Answer 42

ALWAYS IMMOVABLE

1) Separate Ownership - Ownership of standing timber separate from the ground is expressly sanctioned by the Civil Code. When there is no unity of ownership between the ground and the standing timber, the standing timber is a separate immovable and is not a component part of the land.
2) Unity of ownership - When there IS a unity of ownership between the ground and the standing timber, the standing timber is an immovable because it is a component part of a tract of land.

Question 43

Landowner’s right to Demand Removal of timber

Answer 43

The owner of the land can compel the owner of the separately owned timber to remove it within a reasonable time.

Question 44

Integral Parts of land

Answer 44

A thing that is incorporated into a tract of land, a building, or other construction in such a way as to become an integral part of the thing into which it is incorporated is a component part of that thing.

Question 45

Building Materials

Answer 45

Building materials lose their separate identity when they are used in the construction of a building, but they are movables until they actually incorporated into the immovable.