The Gemara has been talking about types of people who are unable to establish a presumption of ownership — for example, sharecroppers are known to reside on land that is not theirs and so are unable to establish a claim to presumptive ownership. On today’s daf, we learn that sharecroppers and others in this category do have a path to establish ownership of a piece of property, with one exception:
Rav Nahman said: Rav Huna said to me that all (of the types of people who do not have the ability to establish the presumption of ownership), when they bring proof, their proof is valid and the court places the field in their possession.
But if there is a robber who brings proof that a field is theirs, their proof is not valid, and the court does not place the field in their possession.
Rav Huna teaches that individuals who normally cannot establish a claim of presumptive ownership can still present a document or witnesses to demonstrate that they have acquired a piece of land. But this method is unavailable to robbers because their reputation for taking what is not truly theirs supersedes their testimony. Being a sharecropper doesn’t undermine one’s overall trustworthiness, but robbers, even when they appear to have the appropriate paperwork, are not given legal standing to take possession of land they claim to own.
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One might think that just as Rav Huna would deny a known robber the standing to claim a piece of property in court, he would also invalidate a transaction in which a person was known to have used physical force to coerce another to sell them a piece of property. But he doesn’t.
Rav Huna says: Suspended, and he sold it, his sale is valid.
Even if someone is hung from a tree and forced to sell their property, Rav Huna rules that the sale is valid. How does Rav Huna justify this?
Whatever a person sells, were it not that he is compelled (by his need for money), he would not sell it, and even so, his sale is valid.
In other words, anytime someone sells something, they are doing so because they are compelled to by some need (like money), so if we canceled the transactions of people suspended from trees we might have to cancel all transactions. The Gemara quickly rejects this option, however, differentiating between those who are motivated to sell by their own distress and those upon whom distress is forced.
The Gemara will go on to try and find grounds to overturn Rav Huna’s ruling, probably for the reason you might imagine: It simply seems wrong that someone forcibly compelled to sell something they own, whether by being hung from a tree or some other method of compulsion, would find that sale upheld in a court of law. But in the end (spoiler alert), Rav Huna’s teaching is upheld and codified into law.
So what options does that leave the hanging person in the tree? It seems it might be better for them to refuse the sale and have their land taken instead. In that case, at least, the courts would have recourse to restore it to them.
Read all of Bava Batra 47 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 11, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
