ABSTRACT
When governments embark on public projects, sometimes mistakes happen. A government might mistakenly construct part of a road or some other publicly owned facility on land that is owned by a private person without condemning that land. When this kind of mistake happens and a landowner does not object for a long period of time and a dispute later arises, the governmental entity will sometimes assert that the doctrine of adverse possession vests title in the disputed land in favor of the government or that the doctrine of common law prescription establishes an easement in favor of the government. US courts almost universally recognize that these well-established common law doctrines can benefit governmental entities. Some commentators, however, have criticized the majority view of US courts and called for a ban of adverse possession or prescription by the state or have recommended that a governmental entity should pay just compensation when it acquires property interests using these doctrines.
In this article, we reject most of these critiques because they underestimate the importance of adverse possession and prescription by governmental entities to the functioning of the legal system and overestimate the danger of abuse …
Lovett, John A and Hoops, Björn, Adverse Possession by the State: Toward Remedial Equivalency (February 10, 2023), 69 Loyola Law Review 1 (2022); Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Research Paper No 2023-01; University of Groningen Faculty of Law Research Paper No 10/2023.
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