The Madras law journal - v. 17 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: from those applied to possessory suits; and it is by no means clear that in the second group of cases above referred to the expiration of the period of limitatio... more »n has the effect of creating a right or title in the trespasser. We have, therefore, to see whether the case now under consideration falls in the first or in the second of the above groups and, if in the latter, whether S. 28 of Act XV of 1877 applies to it. It seems to us that the learned Judges have misapplied the maxim cujust est solum efus est usque ad cesium, usque ad medium terra. Whoever has got the solum or the site is, no doubt, in law ' the owner of everything up to the sky and down to the centre of the earth.' (Corbet v. Hill).1 But the converse is not—as the learned Judges themselves seem to concede—true. The owtiership of air space—if such were legally possible—would per se give no title to the land underneath, nor would it be any basis for the acquisition of a prescriptive title to the land, though under exceptional circumstances, the user of the space above may be presumptive evidence of the ownership of the land beneath. It has indeed been said that the dropping of water from eaves gives by occupation (and sometimes also by prescript ion) a possession of the land beneath (See the eaves, but this.is because there is an actual use; of the land itself Angellon' Limitations,' S. 393 ; Buswell on Limitation, S. 250 ; see also Mohanlal v. Amratlal.) Between these two, there lies another question : Can the air-space or any portion thereof be the subject of posse ?sion or of ownership—whether original or prescriptive—independ ently of the land underneath ? We are not aware of this question having been anywhere discussed in the abstract. It is not easy to say whether or not air-space will fall within the definiti...« less