Law360 Canada ( July 24, 2026, 12:12 PM EDT) -- Appeal by appellant from a judgment of the Quebec Court of Appeal which set aside a judgment of the Superior Court. Years ago, the respondents or their predecessors in title each purchased from the appellant a lot bounded by a large navigable lake. In front of each of the riparian lots, and extending from the lateral boundaries of these lots, was a strip of land submerged under the lake waters that, according to the appellant, belonged to it as a private owner. The respondents stated that they did not learn of the existence of the submerged strip of land until the publication of a new cadastre for the territory which indicated that the strip was owned by the appellant. They filed an application seeking a declaratory judgment and the cancellation of registrations in the land register. Relying on the civil law maxim accessorium sequitur principale, they maintained that the strip was sold to them with their respective riparian lots. The Superior Court interpreted the deeds of sale and found that the submerged lots were not included in the deeds, nor were they accessories. The Court of Appeal held that the submerged lots were accessories to the riparian lots and declared the respondents the owners of the submerged lots. The appellant submitted that the Court of Appeal gave the accessory rule an unprecedented and overly broad scope and that, in the alternative, the parties to the contracts excluded its application. The respondents argued that the submerged lots, by their nature and under “ancestral rules” applicable to bodies of water, were accessories to the riparian lots and that the contracts of sale did not expressly exclude the rule that the accessory followed the principal....