## Facts

- A rural two-section tract contained many separately owned lots, long used as open grazing land, with numerous lots neglected by record owners.
- Beginning around 1939, Leroy Harper grazed cattle across the tract and performed caretaking tasks such as brush control.
- Harper’s initial use of the tract was rent-free and based on permission from a caretaker acting for the owners, in exchange for Harper’s maintenance and supervision of the land.
- Around 1947, Harper began acquiring record title to some lots in the tract through purchases and other transactions, and he contacted owners about buying additional lots.
- Ray Willis later purchased and recorded a deed to a specific lot within the tract for which Harper did not have record title.
- Harper filed a possessory action, alleging that Willis’s deed recordation and assertion of ownership disturbed Harper’s possession.
- In deposition, Harper admitted he had not possessed Willis’s lot “as owner,” and described his intent as physical use with a hope of later purchasing the lot.

## Issues

1. Whether Harper’s long-term grazing and maintenance activities constituted possession sufficient to maintain a possessory action, given his admitted lack of intent to possess the disputed lot as owner.
2. Whether Harper’s deposition testimony eliminated any genuine issue of material fact on the intent element of possession, justifying summary judgment.
3. Whether the procedural articles governing possessory actions incorporate the Civil Code’s substantive requirements of possession, including intent to possess as owner.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment for Willis and dismissed Harper’s possessory action.
- Harper’s entry and continued use were permissive and caretaking in character, which did not establish civil possession of the disputed lot.
- Harper failed to show a clear, unequivocal change from permissive holding to possession as owner.
- Harper’s deposition admissions negated the intent element (animus) required for a possessory action, leaving no genuine issue for trial.
- The court held that possessory-action procedure operates in harmony with the Civil Code concept of possession and does not displace the intent requirement.

## Legal Principles

- A plaintiff in a possessory action must prove corporeal detention (corpus) plus intent to possess as owner (animus domini).
- Use begun by permission (precarious holding or non-possessory detention) is not civil possession unless the holder clearly repudiates the permissive basis through unequivocal acts inconsistent with the permission and sufficient to give notice.
- Efforts to purchase from record owners and admissions of non-ownership intent are evidence inconsistent with animus domini.
- Summary judgment is proper when the plaintiff’s own testimony conclusively negates an essential element of possessory relief.

## Conclusion

Because Harper’s use of the disputed lot originated in permission and his own testimony showed he did not intend to possess it as owner, he lacked the legally required possession to bring a possessory action; summary judgment for Willis was properly affirmed.


Harper v. Willis, 383 So. 2d 1299 (La. Ct. App. 3d Cir. 1980)