Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/192

156 156 HARVARD LAW REVIEW It is assumed by Dean Ames in his classic article on Disseisin of Chattels, or The Nature of Ownership, as it is later called, that the right of recovery is the same right of action against each suc- cessive disseisor, and that B holds possession subject to the same defect as A, with the additional defect of a right of action in A. This is, however, to assume the main question in issue. Actions for the recovery of property are foimded, (i) upon the plaintiff's title and consequent right of possession; and (2) upon the defend- ant's wrongful detention or withholding of possession.^^ In the case of successive trespassers, each entry is to be regarded a fresh and independent wrong. When the first trespasser makes his forced abandonment of the land the right of action against him is gone. A new and entirely distinct cause of action accrues to the owner against each new intruder for the new interference with his right of possession and the independent wrongful act of entry. As the Supreme Court of Michigan said in Riopelle v. Gilman,^^ "The right of action against any independent disseisor or intruder must date back only to the origin of his possession; while if one suc- ceeds to another by transfer of title or claim, the right of action goes back to the first occupant in the chain of adverse possession." As Parker, J., says in Johnson &• Sons v. Brock,^^ " the old right of action was gone when the first intruder went out, and that a new right of action arose when the fresh intrusion occurred." When one purchases land from one exercising dominion over it, he buys a title in the process of being quieted and protected by the statute of Hmitations. A possessory title is thus a growing plant becoming more and more firmly rooted in the soil. No title can grow on this possession if the root is broken by ouster. If there is privity between the successive occupants, the posses- sion of each is rooted to or engrafted upon the original entry, and may be regarded as an outgrowth of the former possession.^* On the other hand there seems no reason why B, a trespasser, a casual interloper, who drives A from possession, should get the benefit of «i See Langdell, EQxnxy Pleading, §§ 120, 123, 125; Cruise, Digest Real Prop. Tit. 31, ch. II, § 22. •* 23 Mich. ^^, per Campbell, J. » [1907] 2 Ch. 533, 535, 538. " Asher v. Whitlock, L. R. i Q. B. i (1865).