EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF MISTAKE AND IGNORANCE ON USURPATION IN LEGAL CODE

Resumen

By employing and adopting the ideas of Islamic Jurists, Iranian legislators have formulated the most comprehensive concept of “usurpation” in article 308 of the civil law.  For usurpation to be realized, the conditions are for the act to be forcible and by conquest. And to be considered as conquest, the judgment of the public fashion is the criterion. Thus, upon conquering others’ right or property forcibly, usurpation takes place and the usurper will be subjected to civil liability till they return the usurped entity and if that cannot be done, the price of it or an alternative object of the same worth or value along with the lost interests should be paid back to the owner. In civil liability, however, it makes no difference if the conquest over another person’s right or property has been done intentionally or the usurper has been ignorant and has committed the offense mistakenly. Therefore, ignorance of the usurper or their doing the act mistakenly does not exempt them from civil liability unless there are more than one offenders involved in usurpation and one of them is ignorant of the fact that they are doing usurpation in which case the final liability will be for the usurper who has been aware of the nature of the act. Thus, the present study aims at considering the effects of ignorance and mistake in the laws of Iran.