possession

possession, in law, the acquisition of either a considerable degree of physical control over a physical thing, such as land or chattel, or the legal right to control intangible property, such as a credit—with the definite intention of ownership. With respect to land and chattel, possession may well have started as a physical fact, but possession today is often an abstraction. A servant or an employee, for instance, may have custody of an object, but he does not have possession; his employer does, even though he may be thousands of miles from the object he owns. Furthermore, except in the most abstract way, it is not possible to speak of the possession of intangible property.

In the development of the civil (or Roman) legal system, possession tended to assume more importance than proprietary rights, and the same is true of the common-law (or Anglo-American) system. Thus, possession tends to be regarded as prima facie evidence of the right of ownership; it gives this right against everyone except the rightful owner. Mere possession by a finder is sufficient to provide grounds for an action against one who deprives him of the object with no better right than his own.