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.
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Pratt, C.J. – # The plaintiff, being a chimney sweeper’s boy, found a jewel, and carried it to the defendant’s shop, (who was a goldsmith,) to know what it was, and delivered it into the hands of an apprentice, who, under pretense of weighing it, took out the stones; and, calling to the master to let him know if it came to three half-pence, the master offered the boy the money, who refused to take it, and insisted to have the thing again; whereupon the apprentice delivered him back the socket without the stones.
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At the trial before Cockburn, C.J., at the last Bedfordshire Spring Assizes, the following facts appeared in evidence. About Michaelmas, in the year 1842, Thomas Williamson inclosed from the waste of a manor a piece of land by the side of the highway; and in 1850, he inclosed more land adjoining, and built a cottage; the whole being the land as described and claimed in the writ. He occupied the whole till his death in 1860.
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Hoyles C.J. — # This was an action in trover brought to recover the value of a thousand seals, alleged by the plaintiffs to have been wrongfully taken from the crew of their vessel, the Brothers, at the ice in the spring of 1869, by the defendants, Kane and his crew, and subsequently sold by Kane to the other defendants, Baine, Johnston & Co.
The facts of this case, so far as it is necessary to refer to them for the determination of the questions now under consideration, are as follows:
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Dickson J. — # The respondent, Sophie Carswell, was charged under The Petty Trespasses Act, R.S.M. 1970, c. P50, with four offences (one on each of four days) of unlawfully trespassing upon the premises of the Fairview Corporation Limited, trading under the firm name and style of Polo Park Shopping Centre, located in the City of Winnipeg, after having been requested by the owner not to enter on or come upon the premises.
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Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. cxv. 16.
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4 (1) Subject to subsection (2), the property in all wildlife situate within the Province, while in a state of nature, is hereby declared to be vested in Her Majesty in right of the Province and no person shall acquire any right or property therein otherwise than in accordance with this Act and the regulations.
(2) A person who lawfully kills wildlife and complies with all applicable provisions of this Act and the regulations acquires the right of property in that wildlife.
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