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JIPYONG Has Successfully Represented Seoul Metropolitan Government in a Supreme Court Case Regarding Registration of Title Transfer

2023.02.02

The public organization in charge of the administration of an elementary school (“Elementary School A”) began occupying the land in question, which was included in the site of Elementary School A, around 1942, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government took over the occupation in 1963 following the reorganization of administrative areas and is still occupying the land in question. In around 1964, the Seoul Metropolitan Government filed a lawsuit seeking the execution of the registration of the transfer of the title of the Elementary School A’s site, including the land in question, on the ground that it was given as a gift. The court issued a decision in favor of the Seoul Metropolitan Government on the ground that B, whose name appears in the land registry as the owner of the Elementary School A’s site, was deemed to confessed the facts alleged by the Seoul Metropolitan Government as B failed to evidently contest such facts. B's heirs succeeded to the litigation proceedings in 2020 and filed a subsequent completion appeal in 2020. On appeal, new documents were submitted showing that the land in question was subject to agricultural land distribution in 1950. 
 
The lower court first determined that whether B gave the land in question as a gift was not proven because there were no surviving materials and recordings of the first-instance trial and the documents supporting B’s donation were unreliable. On the other hand, the court held that the Plaintiff (i.e., the Seul Metropolitan Government)’s presumption of autonomous possession was not recognized on the ground that (i) the Seoul  Metropolitan Government was well aware of the fact that the farmland distribution process was made assuming another person as the owner of the land in question in the course of receiving the land in question, (ii) if the Seoul Metropolitan Government had been the true owner, it would not have received the farmland distribution or would have proceeded with the title registration process by proving the cause of acquisition different from the farmland distribution. The lower court’s decision led to a situation where the ownership of the land in question, which had been used as the site of Elementary School A for 80 years, had to be transferred. 
 
It was in this context that JIPYONG Construction & Real Estate Group represented the Seoul Metropolitan Government in an appeal to the Supreme Court. JIPYONG Construction & Real Estate Group meticulously analyzed the legal issues involved in the case, including the person lawfully occupy the site in question at each time of occupation, precedents where the presumption of autonomous possession was overturned or not overturned, and the entity implementing the agricultural land distribution process, and presented the grounds for the appeal.   
 
In response, the Supreme Court accepted JIPYONG Construction & Real Estate Group's grounds for appeal, reaffirming the legal principle that "even if the government, etc. fails to submit documents regarding the acquisition process of the land while claiming the completion of the extinctive prescription, if one cannot exclude the possibility that the state legally acquired the ownership through the acquisition process of public use property at the time of the commencement of the occupation, the presumption of the state's autonomous possession will not be negated and it shall not be recognized as unauthorized occupation," and reversed the original judgment, finding that the presumption of autonomous possession was not refuted. It is of great significance that the supreme court has entered a precedent that can be used as a reference for determining whether the presumption of autonomous possession by the state is overturned in relation to the completion of the acquisitive prescription of real property.

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