Week 1: Trespass: Exclusion & Access Terms Flashcards
Trespass
Criminal trespass
Trespass to Chattels
Intentional intrusion that deprived another of possession of land
CT: unprivileged entry onto another person’s property after entry has been forbidden (statue-governed)
TtC: owners of personal property may recover damages for intentional interference with the possession of personal property
Rights
Right to Exclude = property owners may exclude others from their land
- some scholars consider this right’s main value is in its connection to Right to Use
Right to Use = property owners have a right to use / have peaceful enjoyment of their land
**Right to posess
Free alienation
Right to dispose/destory
Right to associate/not associate**
Exclusion rights
- Think about who is doing the walking across, who is being trespassed on
- Might and status are what dominate
Property
- an equalizer, how democracy flourished even if there’s unequal distribution
- Blackstone, “sole and despotic dominion” = exclusion
- Professor Wesley Hohfeld: not necessarily conflict between people who have rights and those who don’t, but between people who have rights and others who say those rights infringe on their rights
Substantive law that compromises exlcusion
- Servitudes (easements, cous)
- Future interests that block what the present property owner wants
- Nuisance law: government turns in preference for exclusion for policy
Remedies that compromise exclusion
- compensatory damages, “for sale” of your property
- encroached upon wants to keep their whole parcel and court says no, gotta give up an inch but you’ll get money
- usually courts will tear down property to revamp for encroachment but not going “near the line” to intrude on the property
- lots of room for strategic bargaining for the property owner to get more out of it - Dignitary harms via punitives hard to quantify so damages don’t compensate for all things
