This Note addresses the rule of property law providing the proper person to bring claims for injury to real property is the owner of the property at the time of the injury.  This rule restricts subsequent owners of real property from bringing suit against tortfeasors who injured the property before their purchase.  The inability of landowners to obtain relief from tortfeasors has many negative consequences, including preventing parties who have been harmed from obtaining relief and creates an inequitable windfall for tortfeasors.  The bases of this rule are examined and found to be anachronistic and indefensible, and this Note urges that the rule be amended.

Specifically, this Note suggests that state courts add a notice provision and a free-assignment-of-claims provision to the existing rule.  The notice provision would provide that the proper party to bring tort claims for injury to real property is the owner of the land at the time of injury unless the subsequent owner of the land did not have notice of the injury when she purchased the property.  The second addition to the existing rule, a free-assignment-of-claims provision, would allow owners of real property to assign their property damage claims to subsequent purchasers, and this Note defends the provision from application of the doctrinal vestiges of the old (and now almost obsolete) common law prohibition against assignment of causes of action.

This Note concludes that a fully amended rule would provide that “the proper party to bring tort claims for injury to land is the person who owned the land at the time that it was injured unless either (1) the subsequent owner of the land did not have notice of the property damage when she purchased the injured land or (2) the person who owned the land when it was injured assigned her property damage claims to someone else.”