Acquisitive prescription may benefit public persons

Property may be acquired by prescription for thirty years. This requires continuous and uninterrupted possession, peaceful, public, unequivocal, and having acted as a landlord for at least 30 years. A public person may invoke the 30-year statute of limitations.

The Court of Appeal had declared inadmissible the claim for ownership of a municipality based on the thirty-year acquisition limitation period. It had considered that the General Code of the Ownership of Public Persons (CGPPP) listed exhaustively and exclusively the methods of acquisition of property by public persons. Acquisitive limitation periods which were not mentioned therein could not be invoked. The municipality is taking the case to the Court of Cassation.

This gives the municipality reason. The Civil Code does not reserve this method of acquisition for private individuals only. In addition, the CGPPP lists the methods of acquiring the property of public persons but does not exclude the possibility of acquiring by prescription.