OCCUPANCY. The taking possession of those things corporeal which are without an owner, with an intention of appropriating them to one's own use.
Pothier defines it to he the title by which one ac .quires property in a thing which belongs to nobody, by taking possession of it with design of acquiring it. Tr. du Dr. de Propridtd, n. 20. The Civil Code of Louisiana, art. 3375, nearly following Pothier, de fines occupancy to be "a mode of acquiring prop erty by which a thing which belongs to nobody be comes the property of the person who took posses sion of it with an intention of acquiring a right of rownership in it." The basis of its origin seems to be not an instinctive bias towards the institution of property, but a presumption, arising out of the long continuation of that institution, that everything Should have an owner. Maine, Anc. L. 249. Occu pancy is sometimes used in the sense of occupation or holding possession ; indeed it has come to be very generally so used In this country in homestead laws, public-land laws, and the like ; Walters V. People, 21 III. 178; Redfield v. R. Co., 25 Barb. (N.
Y.) 54; Act of Cong. May 29, 1830 (4 Stat. at L. 420); Weishrod v. DaeniCke, 36 Wis. 73; see Quehl v. Peterson, 47 Minn. 13, 49 N. W. 390; 12 Q. B. Div. 366; 2 id. 588; but this does not appear to be a common legal use of the term, as recognized by English authorities.
To constitute occupancy, there must be a taking of a thing corporeal, belonging to nobody, with an intention of becoming the owner of it; Co. Litt. 416.
A right by occupancy attaches in the finder of lost goods unreclaimed by the owner; in the captor of beasts ferce naturce, so long as he retains possession ; 2 Bla. Com. 403; the owner of •lands by accession, and the own er of goods acquired by confusion.
It was formerly considered, also, that the captor of goods contraband of war acquired a right by occupancy ; but it is now held otherwise, such goods being now held to be primarily 'vested in the sovereign, and as be longing to individual captors only to the extent and under such ,regulations as posi tive laws may prescribe; 2 Kent 290. See PRIER.