## Facts

- Hannabalson and Sessions owned adjoining residential lots separated by a boundary fence and had a hostile relationship.
- A dispute began after Sessions alleged a brick was thrown at him and he threatened arrest, prompting a confrontation with Hannabalson and her husband.
- Sessions had a ladder hanging on a peg attached to the partition fence; Hannabalson’s husband attempted to remove it as an encroachment.
- Hannabalson claimed she did not touch the ladder and merely leaned on the fence with an arm hanging over onto Sessions’s side, and that Sessions struck her arm with a clenched fist.
- Sessions denied striking her and claimed Hannabalson climbed up, reached over, and tried to seize the ladder, and he only placed an open hand on her arm and told her to keep to her side.
- Hannabalson sued at law for assault and battery.
- A jury returned a verdict for Sessions; Hannabalson appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a person becomes a trespasser by projecting an arm over a boundary line into the airspace above a neighbor’s land.
2. Whether a landowner is privileged to use reasonable force to remove or prevent such an intrusion, defeating an assault-and-battery claim.

## Decision

- The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the defendant.
- The court treated the jury’s verdict as resolving the factual dispute in Sessions’s favor regarding the nature and degree of contact.
- The court concluded that intrusion across the vertical boundary into the adjoining owner’s airspace may constitute trespass.
- The court held that reasonable, non-excessive force to repel or end a trespass is privileged and, as found by the jury, the contact here was not actionable as assault and battery.

## Legal Principles

- Ownership of land includes the right to exclude intrusions into the column of air above the surface within the property boundary.
- Trespass may occur through partial bodily entry; an intrusion by any part of the person across the boundary line can be trespass.
- A possessor of land may use reasonable force to prevent or terminate a trespass, but may not use excessive force.
- When evidence conflicts on whether force was excessive or whether an intrusion occurred, the jury’s resolution of those facts will be upheld absent reversible error.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a defense verdict in an assault-and-battery action arising from a boundary-line dispute, holding that an arm extended over a property line can constitute trespass into the neighbor’s airspace and that a landowner may use reasonable force to remove the intrusion.


Hannabalson v. Sessions, 90 N.W. 93 (Iowa 1902)