Usuoapio

or USUCAPTIO. A term of Roman law used to denote a mode of acquisition of property; it corresponds very nearly to the term prescription. But the prescription of Roman law differed from that of the English law in this, that no mala fide possessor (i.e. person in possession knowingly of the property of another) could, by however long a period, acquire title by possession merely. The two essential requisites to usucapio were justa causa (i.e. title) and bona fides (i.e. ignorance). "The term usucapio is sometimes, but erroneously, written usucaptio." Brown. This word in the Roman law indicated that when a person had for a fixed time been bona fide in possession of a chattel not his own, he acquired a property therein by use against all the world. There is nothing in the English law precisely corresponding to it, but there are two things in the English law which in different ways resemble it. 1. A purchase in market overt, whereby a bona fide purchaser in general acquires a property in a chattel, though it was not the vendor's to sell. 2. The positive prescription arising under the prescription act, 1832 (2 & 3 Wm. IV. ch. 71). But this prescription applies to incorporeal hereditaments only, whereas usucapion applied to all kinds of property. The purely negative prescription arising from the statutes of limitation is often confounded with usucapion; but usucapion was a direct source of title to property; while the statutes of limitation confer no title at all directly, but merely bar the right of action of a negligent absentee. Mozley & W.