11.4 Ownership and Possession

The classic tabular contrast (memorize; it appears in nearly every examination): Point Possession Ownership Nature Fact — physical control + animus Right — title recognized and enforced by law Source Acquired by taking, delivery, or operation of law Acquired by purchase, inheritance, gift, prescription (limitation), accession Duration Lost by abandonment, ouster, loss of the thing Indefinite; not lost by non-use; lost only by transfer, expropriation, prescription Protection Protected against all but the person with a better right Protected against all absolutely (right in rem at full strength) Evidence *Prima facie evidence of ownership The fact to be proved; ownership need not be physically manifested Remedies Possessory (recovery of possession, injunction) Proprietary (declaration of title, eviction, mesne profits, account) Relation between them Can exist without ownership (tenant, thief, bailee) Can exist without possession (landlord, mortgagor not in possession, owner of goods bailed) The interplay — four analytical points that earn marks: Possession is the image of ownership: law protects possession largely because it is ownership's usual outward form — the presumption possessio vigit ex praesumptione dominii (possession holds by the presumption of ownership). They can part company in both directions: a thief possesses without owning; an absentee landlord owns without possessing. Neither situation confuses a student who has mastered the fact/right distinction. Possession can ripen into ownership: the doctrine of adverse…