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Archive -Judiciary

Law practitioners learn best practices in property law |20 April 2016

Judges and other law practitioners got the opportunity to learn specific topics that can be relevant and useful in their everyday work and find best practices for improvement in what is decided in Seychelles.

They did this through a workshop held last Wednesday and led by senior lecturer at the University of Seychelles (UniSey) Sara Migliorini.

The workshop was organised by the UniSey and the judicial college.

Ms Migliorini said property law is a very vast subject and the possibilities of problems in this area of the law are really infinite so a few issues were selected that she thought would be interesting for the judges and those in private practice.

The focus was on immovable property such as buildings and lands so it included the theory of abuse of right of ownership in Seychelles with a comparative overview with the French theory of l’abus de droit and the constitutional dimension of the abuse of right of ownership.

She also presented issues on Droit de Superficie (building lease) which is a special kind of property rights that is specific to the similar tradition and issues on the natural easement of running water on the configuration of the land itself and how damages that may be caused by running water on a lower level of the property may be dealt with.

“These subjects are very controversial; there are decided cases on these subjects everyday in courts so we’re trying to find the best practices and solutions also with a comparative perspective from France,” she said.

“We’ve been looking at cases of buildings built partly on someone else’s land, so how do we settle the dispute? Do we demolish the whole house even if the encroachment is very small? Or do we find another solution? Other cases may be about the installation of photovoltaic cells on houses, what kind of property right is that? And for the final topic of running water, what happens in case of heavy rains? What if rain coming from a higher level damages a lower level property? So these are everyday disputes,” she said.

She also noted that no provision is made in the civil code to describe abuse of right and the decision lies on the judges.

“If you have a right it doesn’t mean that you can exercise the right in a way that is abusive, so it is the judge’s job to find where the boundaries to exercise the right lie,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

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