Trinity Fellow’s Book Cited by the Supreme Court of Canada

A recent judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada has cited and relied upon research by Luke Rostill, Associate Professor of Property Law, University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Law, Trinity College. In Kosicki v Toronto (City) (2025 SCC 28), the Court considered fundamental questions about the nature of property rights and adverse possession (“squatting”), drawing explicitly on Rostill’s book Possession, Relative Title and Ownership in English Law (Oxford University Press, 2021)

The case concerned whether individuals could acquire ownership of land through long-term possession where the land was formally owned by a municipal authority and designated as public parkland. In his dissenting judgment, Justice Nicholas Kasirer (with whom three other Justices agreed) engaged closely with Rostill’s analysis of possession and ownership, endorsing a central thesis of the book: that the property right acquired by a squatter, often described as a “possessory title in fee simple”, is not created by legislation but arises from the common law itself.

Rostill’s work challenges the view that statutes governing limitation periods are the source of possessory ownership. Instead, it argues that such statutes merely regulate when the original owner’s right to recover land is barred, while the possessor’s proprietary title is grounded in much older common law principles. Justice Kasirer’s reasons adopt this framework, treating the squatter’s interest as a fee simple title acquired at common law, simply through taking possession.

The citation is notable not only for its engagement with English legal history, but also for its demonstration of how theoretical scholarship can shape contemporary judicial reasoning at the highest level.  

The full judgement can be found here.