Property

Question 1

How are things classified?

Answer 1

1. Common things may not be owned by anyone and may be freely used in the manner nature intended.
2. Public Things - are vested in the state or one its political subdivisions in its public capacity.
3. Private things are owned by individuals, or by the state or one its political subdivisions.

Question 2

What about water bodies?

Answer 2

States owns as public things and use is free to all.

If it is navigable in fact, then it is in law.

If susceptible to commercial use, then body of water is navigable.

Needs only to be capable of being used.

Question 3

What about a navigable canal built with private funds?

Answer 3

Canal built 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. [La. Civ. Code art. 450, cmt. f] Only natural navigable water bodies are public things.

Question 4

What about the high seas?

Answer 4

Common thing.

Question 5

What is the territorial sea?

Answer 5

(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.

Public Things

Question 6

What is the seashore?

Answer 6

Space of land over which the waters of the sea spread in the highest tide during the winter
season. [La. Civ. Code art. 451]
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 the winter season.

Question 7

What about the waters and bottoms of natural navigable water bodies?

Answer 7

Public things.

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

Question 8

Who owns the banks?

Answer 8

Privately owned subjected to limited public use.

Public use must be incidental to navigation.

Question 9

What is the bank?

Answer 9

Land between the ordinary high- and low-water mark.

When there is a levee
established according to law, it establishes the bank

Question 10

What about the waters of non-navigable rivers and streams?

Answer 10

These are privately owned to the middle of the streams?

Question 11

What about lakes?

Answer 11

State owns the waters and bottoms of natural navigable lakes.

State owns to the ordinary high water mark.

Question 12

How to classify between river and lakes?

Answer 12

courts consider four factors:
(i) size and shape,
(ii) depth,
(iii) history, and
(iv) current.

Question 13

What is accretion?

Answer 13

Slow and imperceptible deposit of soil on land abutting a body of water.

Question 14

What is alluvion?

Answer 14

Accretion that forms successively and imperceptibly on the bank of a river or stream.

Question 15

What is dereliction?

Answer 15

Successive, imperceptible, and permanent (i.e., not merely seasonal) receding of water
from the bank of a river or stream.

Question 16

Who does alluvion and dereliction belong to?

Answer 16

To the riparian landowner is formed along the banks of a river or stream.

To the state if it’s not a river or stream that belongs to the state.

Question 17

How is alluvion divided?

Answer 17

If there are several owners, each owner is entitled to a fair proportion n of the new frontage, depending on the relative values of the frontage and
acreage.

Question 18

What is erosion>

Answer 18

Occurs when land subsides, resulting in once 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 19

What is avulsion?

Answer 19

When a price of ground is moved by the sudden action of water of a river or stream.

Original owner may claim it if suit is brought within a year or if the new opener’s of the bank to which the land is united has not taken possession.

Question 20

What about when a stream changes course?

Answer 20

All who lost land will be able to take from the abandons riverbed in proportion to the land lost.

Question 21

What are roads?

Answer 21

May be owned by the public, privately owned and subject to public use, or privately owned and not subject to public use.

Question 22

How to dedicate a road?

Answer 22

Through a valid donation of a written act.

Statutory dedication through substantial compliance with the statute.

Tacit when a governing authority maintains the road for more than three years.

Question 23

What is an incorporeal thing?

Answer 23

Things with no body that are comprehended solely by the understanding (e.g., rights of inheritance,
servitudes, obligations, and property actions, i.e., possessory and petitory actions)

Question 24

What is a corporeal thing?

Answer 24

Things that have a body and can be felt or touched

Question 25

What is classified as always immovable?

Answer 25

1. Land with component parts.
2. Buildings

If there is no unity of ownership, then building is a separate immovable and not a component part of the land.

If there is unity of ownership, the building is a component part of the land.

How to determine whether a structure is a building:

Whether it is to be inhabited by people, its cost, its size, its permanence, and prevailing notions of
what constitutes a building

3. Standing timber - look to unity of ownership above.

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

4. Integral parts - 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 thin
5. Permanent attachments - 466 test.

(1) Things that complete a building.

Building’s permanent attachments as things that are attached to it and, according to prevailing usages, serve to complete a building of the same general type, without regard to
its specific use.

Includes doors, shutters, gutters, cabinetry, and systems such as plumbing,
heating, cooling, and electrical.

(2) Permanent attachments of a construction of a construction other than a building as things that are attached to it and serve its principal use.

Test considers whether the attached thing serves the principal sue of the construction

Ex. lighting rod to protect water tower vs. cell telephone antenna installed on a water tower unrelated to the water tower principal use.

(3) Things that cannot be removed without substantial damage

If things meets this criteria, then it’s a component part

Question 26

What about things are sometimes movable or immovable?

Answer 26

Other constructions permanently attached to the ground are movable or immovable depending upon their unity of ownership.

OCPA owned by the owner of the ground is an immovable because it’s a component part of the land.

OCPA are movables when there is no unity of ownership.

Question 27

What about unharvested crops and ungathered fruits of trees?

Answer 27

When there is UOI, then the crops and fruits are immovable.

When there is no UOI, then

Question 28

How to make an immovable by declaration for equipment, appliances, and machinery?

Answer 28

Four conditions must be met:

1. Must be UOI between immovable and machinery.
2. Immovable cannot be private residence.
3. Component part must be placed on the immovable for service and improvement.
4. Declaration must be filed in the conveyance records of the parish where the immovable is located.