Claiming ownership is an imprescriptible right

This legal action tends to defend the right of ownership, it is not subject to prescription and can therefore be exercised a very long time after a disturbance.

The Court was seized by a company which failed to obtain the release of a service apartment, by a former employee who had retired there for years.

It is too late to claim, argued this retiree. The occupancy of the apartment is tied to a former employment contract, he said, and any contract-related claim must be exercised within the general five-year statute of limitations.

But for the magistrates on the contrary, whether or not there was a contract at the origin of the occupation of the accommodation, the right of occupation having ceased with the end of the employment contract, it is now a question of a claim related to the right of ownership which can never be prescribed.

The Court has also often ruled that there was never any abuse in defending one's property. She had ruled in 2014 that even if the owner was negligent, let time pass, did not use his prerogatives on his property and abandoned it, he did not lose his rights because, said -elle, "the right of ownership is not extinguished by non-use".

The only risk in this matter is "usucapion". That is to say the risk of seeing a third party, having publicly taken possession of a property without causing any dispute, declaring himself the owner after a period of thirty years.

(Cass. Civil 3, 10.9.2020, Q 19-13.130).