Abandonment

Just as it is possible to acquire property by first possession, property rights can also be “given up” through a processes called abandonment.

Abandonment occurs when property–once established by possession or other legal means–is voluntarily given up by the owner. As the quoted passage above notes, abandonment requires the owner to demonstrate an express intention to permanently abandon their property rights: they must have “the intention of terminating ownership, possession and control.”¹

For example, in Manning v Algard, the defendant Algard lost or misplaced a briefcase containing 17th century gold coins. Those coins were later sold to Manning in a garage sale. Since Algard lost or misplaced his briefcase rather than intentionally leaving it behind, the court found that he had not abandoned the coins, and therefore concluded that Algard’s estate still held a superior property interest in them.

However, as Chief Justice Hoyles also explains in Clift, there is a different rule with respect to wild animals (animals ferae naturae). Property in these animals can be established through first possession, but that property is “lost” again as soon as the animal escapes its owner’s control. In this way, possessory rights in wild animals establish only a contingent form of property–unlike property in inanimate objects, which remain intact even if an object is lost or misplaced and insofar as it is not intentionally abandoned.