Also known as: rights of common · common right · common rights
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A nonpossessory interest authorizing the holder to remove a natural resource or substance from another's land. The interest runs with the land and may be created by grant or prescription.
Beth and Max hold title to a combine as tenants in common. They advertise rentals to neighboring farms and divide gross receipts each season. A court determines that their joint or common right in the machine does not by itself create a partnership under the statute.
Farmer Allen grants Baker the right to cut and remove oak from Allen's woodlot each winter. Baker seasons and sells the timber for profit. A dispute arises when Allen's heir denies access. The court upholds Baker's right of common created by the recorded grant.
Residents of a village have pastured sheep on an adjoining moor for forty years without permission. When the landowner fences the moor, the villagers sue to protect their right of common. The court recognizes the prescriptive profit and orders the fence removed.
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A developer dredges a pond connected to navigable waters and charges fees for access. The United States asserts that the public retains a right of common to use the waters, requiring just compensation for any impairment.
A municipality bans possession of certain handguns. Residents claim the ordinance infringes a right of common protected by the Second Amendment and incorporated against the states.
A company challenges a state unemployment tax on grounds that it burdens a right of common to conduct business without excessive exactions. The court upholds the levy as a valid exercise of legislative power.
A right of common permits removal of resources such as timber, minerals, or game from the servient land. An easement typically authorizes only passage or limited use without extraction.
Yes. Longstanding open and continuous exercise of the right to take resources can ripen into a prescriptive profit à prendre under the same rules that govern easements.
No. The Uniform Partnership Act expressly states that a joint or common right or interest in property does not by itself establish a partnership even when gross returns are shared.
A state agency with regulatory authority over roads or recreation may bring an action to abate interference with the public's common right to safe use of those resources.
…no reimbursable damage to the few who, by the accident of owning contiguous "fast land," previously enjoyed the blessings of the common right in greater measure. See, e. g. , United States v. Commodore Park, Inc. , 324 U. S., at 390-391. The Court recognized that encroachment on rights inhering separately in the adjoining…