Also known as: proprietary · proprietas · proprietors · proprietorship · proprietorships · owner · ownership
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A person who holds legal title to property or operates a business as its owner. Ownership confers rights to use, transfer, and exclude others from the asset, subject to any encumbrances or legal restrictions.
Preston Pratt owns an apartment building but leases units to several families. He enters a tenant's unit at night intending to steal cash from a drawer. Because the unit serves as a dwelling for the tenants rather than Pratt, his entry satisfies the element that the structure belong to another.
Pulse Media signs a binding contract to purchase a warehouse from Premier Manufacturing. Before closing a fire destroys the roof. Under equitable conversion Pulse Media is treated as proprietor of the land and must pay the full purchase price despite the loss.
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After a customer slips on a wet floor at Precision Tools, the store installs new mats. The plaintiff offers the mats to show the proprietor retained control of the premises. The court admits the evidence for that limited purpose rather than to prove negligence.
Paul Peterson leaves Pacific Bank to join a new firm. To check for conflicts the new firm reviews client lists from his prior work. The disclosure is permitted because it concerns only changes in firm ownership and does not reveal privileged client information.
Perry Pratt commingles personal funds with those of his solely owned corporation and fails to observe corporate formalities. A creditor shows unity of interest and ownership. The court pierces the veil and holds Pratt personally liable as the true proprietor.
Paige Porter grants a security interest in her inventory of manufactured homes to Pacific Bank. Because the homes are movable when the interest attaches they qualify as goods. The bank may perfect its interest against the proprietor and later purchasers.
No. Occupancy controls. An owner who leases a building to tenants can still commit burglary of that building because the tenants' dwelling use makes it the property of another.
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Risk passes to the buyer at contract formation in most jurisdictions. The buyer is treated as proprietor of the land and must pay the price even if the property is destroyed before closing.
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Yes. Although subsequent remedial measures are inadmissible to prove negligence, they may be admitted when offered to prove disputed ownership or control of the premises.
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Disclosure is permitted only to the extent necessary to detect conflicts arising from the change in firm ownership and only if the information would not compromise the attorney-client privilege or prejudice the client.
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The plaintiff must prove both unity of interest and ownership so that separate personalities no longer exist and that respecting the corporate fiction would sanction fraud or injustice.
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Goods are all things movable when a security interest attaches, including fixtures, crops, manufactured homes, and embedded computer programs that are considered part of the goods.
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…of the promises hereinafter mentioned, the plaintiffs carried on the business of millers and mealmen in copartnership, and were proprietors and occupiers of the City Steam-Mills in Gloucester, and were possessed of a steam-engine by means of which they worked the said mills and therein cleaned corn, ground the same into meal,…