| Title: | Party wall |
| Original Title: | Mitoyen, mur |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 10 (1765), pp. 582–583 |
| Author: | Unknown |
| Translator: | Kirk Anderson [Wheaton College, MA] |
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.747 |
| Citation (MLA): | "Party wall." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Kirk Anderson. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2012. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.747>. Trans. of "Mitoyen, mur," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 10. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | "Party wall." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Kirk Anderson. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.747 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Mitoyen, mur," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 10:582–583 (Paris, 1765). |
Party wall, the wall separating two adjoining houses.
The only principle we have from Roman law concerning the party wall is that one neighbor was not allowed, without the permission of the other, to put gutters on it for channeling water from the sky or from a water tank.
However our common law, and particularly in Paris, includes many other principles, several of which follow.
When a man has a house built, if he does not leave an empty space on his own property, then he cannot prevent his wall becoming a party wall between him and his neighbor, who can erect his building against this wall, provided that he pay half the cost of the wall and of the land on which the wall sits.
Neither owner of the party wall can have anything done to it without the agreement of his neighbor, or without at least having served him legal notice.
Either neighbor may require that the other help pay for repairs to the party wall, according to the share of the wall adjoined by his building and the cost of repairs to that part.
Neither neighbor may make holes in the party wall to hold the beams of his house if they are deeper than one-half the thickness of the wall, and he must install jambs, perpends or chains, and cut-stone corbels sufficient to support the beams.
In cities and environs, neighbors may be obligated to pay a share of the fences separating houses, courtyards, and gardens, up to the height of the ground floor, including the coping. See the entire entry on easements under Paris common law, with which most other common-law codes are in agreement, save for a very few differences.