It seems it was more the use that was adapted to the land, rather than the other way around, but never mind.\u00a0 It’s clear enough.<\/p>\n
Moving on, we can glean two things from the examples.\u00a0 First, adverse possession need only be continuous for the purposes of the use.\u00a0 That’s why, even if the claimant didn’t have his cattle on the legal owner’s land every day of the year, continuous possession only over the course of a grazing season counted.\u00a0 Note as well that the hornbook (and presumably the court) said the entire<\/em> grazing season.\u00a0 In other words, a claimant grazing his cattle for only part of the season would have failed to acquire “continuous” status.\u00a0 He’d just be a trespasser.<\/p>\n We’re not looking at much in the way of seasons on the Moon, but perhaps Mars will offer more variability.\u00a0 The principle may be applied to novel circumstances, but it may still be applied.<\/p>\n Here the Moon might offer a parallel.\u00a0 We can imagine lunar activities requiring solar power.\u00a0 Sure, daylight lasts for two weeks on the Moon but so does night.\u00a0 How long an industrial battery lasts for supporting a power-intensive activity might be an interesting question if operations cease during a lunar night.\u00a0 After all, lunar night is a force of nature outside one’s control.\u00a0 It might even be counted as akin to a grazing season, to borrow from the first example.<\/p>\n On the other hand, what if someone else has bought the more expensive batteries and claims the same land?\u00a0 Or, what if the batteries exist but a claimant decides they are too expensive for the time being?\u00a0 Does lunar night remain a force of nature outside one’s control?\u00a0 If an operation is not too power-intensive, would a court say lapses in operation take away from a finding of continuous possession?<\/p>\n These types of questions highlight how fact-intensive an inquiry into whether possession is continuous might become.\u00a0 Circumstances in space might differ from the more ground based, but the underlying principles may still be applied.<\/p>\n *Burby, Real Property, <\/em>p. 274 3d Ed., West, 1980.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know. I know.\u00a0 This adverse possession series just won’t end.\u00a0 Remember, however, that there’s a super long list of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Screen-Shot-2018-08-15-at-4.18.24-PM.png?resize=220%2C201&ssl=1\")
Another take-away from the hornbook summary is that if forces of nature outside one’s control interrupt continuous possession, the courts may still find it continuous under the law.\u00a0 Thus, an adverse possessor being driven off the land by a flood did not have his absence for the duration of the flood held against him when determining whether his possession was continuous or not.<\/p>\n