If you use it long enough, you own it, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The highest court in the land has made a ruling in line with the old adage 'possession is nine-tenths of the law' when it comes to a parking spot.
The case in question involved Helene Allie and her new neighbours, Alain Ostiguy and Valerie Savard.
Allie began using one or two parking spaces on her neighbour's property in Bromont in 1994, and nobody ever objected.
After doing this for ten years the Bromont resident effectively gained ownership of the property -- even though she never paid for it.
Under Quebec's Civil Code, anyone who continues to use something, without objection, for a decade has acquired ownership of the item, and can formally apply to the courts to have their ownership recognized.
When the neighbour sold their property in 2011, the new owners, Ostiguy and Savard, filed for an injunction to stop Allie from using the lot. She refused to comply, pointing out that by 'squatting' on the parking space for so long, it was legally now hers.
Judges in Quebec Superior Court and the Court of Appeal agreed with Allie that she had acquired the ownership of one parking space.
Now the Supreme Court has agreed as well, pointing out that ownership of an item grants legal title to that item, and not the other way around.
In legal language: it is acquisitive prescription that grants the right, not the judgment.
The Supreme Court points out that if they wish, Ostiguy and Savard can ask the previous owners for compensation for selling land that didn't belong to them.
"It is possible for them to claim the corresponding loss from their predecessors in title if they can prove that the latter were aware of the respondent’s encroachment before the sale and failed to disclose it to them," wrote the judges.
Because this ruling is based on articles in Quebec's Civil Code, as opposed to common law used elsewhere in Canada, the specific timeframe regarding squatter's rights may be different elsewhere in the country.
