Stephen Johnson Field

“ Why should the owners pay for expenditures they never ordered, or for the construction of works they never authorized? The defendants knew all the time the vice of their title; they knew they were not possessors in good faith; they concocted the scheme by which the fraudulent sale was made; and this court has so adjudged.
In the courts that administer the common law the rights of the owner are paramount and exclusive. An occupant without title is not recognized as entitled to compensation for improvements. ”

“ Pothier, the great legal writer, referring to the rule that no man ought to enrich himself at the expense of another, upon which compensation for improvements is here claimed, says: 'A bona fide possessor may properly oppose it against an owner, but it is not available to a mala fide possessor. The owner can reply to the latter that equity did not empower him to take possession of his land and to make thereon such changes as he desired and so put the owner to charges that were burdensome, and that he might not wish to bear, and which this possessor had no right to impose. ”

“ The civil law as thus stated corresponds with what a great chancellor of England said of the interference of equity to allow one the value of improvements on another's property. 'If a person,' he said, 'really entitled to the estate will encourage the possessor of it to expend his money in improvements, or if he will look on and suffer such expenditures, without apprising the party of his intention to dispute his title, and will afterwards endeavor to avail himself of such fraud, the jurisdiction of equity will attach in such a case. ”