{"id":860,"date":"2025-10-03T21:08:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=860"},"modified":"2025-10-03T21:08:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:08:39","slug":"a-possessor-without-title-can-lease-land-to-a-tenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2025\/10\/03\/a-possessor-without-title-can-lease-land-to-a-tenant\/","title":{"rendered":"A possessor without title can lease land to a tenant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Alabama Supreme held that a possessor of land can lease it to another and that the lease is enforceable against by the tenant. <a href=\"https:\/\/caselaw.findlaw.com\/court\/al-supreme-court\/117157437.html\">Hembree Ins. Tr. V. Maple Indus., Inc<\/a>., 2025 WL 1085479 (Ala. 2025). The lease in this case said that a lease in the name of an individual is valid even though the property was actually owned by a limited liability company (an LLC) owned by the individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The court noted that \u201ca party need not be the owner of a property to lease it to another. While the right to let property is an incident of the title and possession, a lessor may validly lease property to another, despite the fact that the title to the property is in a third person, if the lessor lawfully possesses the property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is arguably an application of the doctrine of relativity of title, which holds that a peaceable possessor land has title superior to anyone but the actual title holder. On the other hand, the Alabama rule is different because it requires \u201clawful possession\u201d and that may or not may embrace the \u201cpeaceable possessor\u201d doctrine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Alabama Supreme held that a possessor of land can lease it to another and that the lease is enforceable against by the tenant. Hembree Ins. Tr. V. Maple Indus., Inc., 2025 WL 1085479 (Ala. 2025). The lease in this case said that a lease in the name of an individual is valid even though the property was actually owned by a limited liability company (an LLC) owned by the individual. The court noted that \u201ca party need not be the owner of a property to lease it to another. While the right to let property is an incident of the title and possession, a lessor may validly lease property to another, despite the fact that the title to the property is in a third person, if the lessor lawfully possesses the property.\u201d This is arguably an application of the doctrine of relativity of title, which holds that a peaceable &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2025\/10\/03\/a-possessor-without-title-can-lease-land-to-a-tenant\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A possessor without title can lease land to a tenant<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,10,37,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leaseholds","category-real-estate-transactions","category-title-issues","category-trespass"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}