Definition
Aquae immittendae (Latin: "for sending water") is a civil law easement entitling the owner of a building surrounded by neighboring structures to discharge waste or rainwater onto adjacent roofs or yards. It is a species of urban servitude — a burden running with the land and imposed on the neighboring property for the benefit of the enclosed building.
The right does not grant unlimited drainage authority; it is confined to the discharge contemplated at the time the servitude was created and cannot be enlarged unilaterally. The servient tenement (the neighboring property) must receive the water; the dominant tenement (the enclosed building) holds the corresponding right.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in materials touching Roman civil law doctrine and its descendants — Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed or civilian jurisdictions, as well as Scots law. Researchers consulting English common law sources will rarely encounter it as a live term; instead, they should look for the analogous common law easements of drainage or the right to discharge water onto neighboring land.
Historical sources use variant spellings. Black's 2nd Ed. Supplemental renders it "aquae immittendab," which is almost certainly a typographical corruption of the correct Latin plural/gerundive form aquae immittendae. Researchers searching historical indexes should run both spellings to avoid missed hits.
The term belongs to a cluster of Roman urban servitudes that were received to varying degrees in civilian jurisdictions. Where Louisiana or Quebec water-rights cases cite civil law doctrine, aquae immittendae may appear without definition — courts assumed reader familiarity with the Roman law background. Researchers unfamiliar with that background risk misreading the scope of rights being claimed.
Because this easement specifically addresses enclosed or surrounded buildings, it has relevance in urban property disputes involving landlocked lots, dense historic city blocks, and similar configurations. It is not a general drainage easement; the surrounding-structure element is definitional.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines the term as "a civil law easement or servitude, consisting in the right of one whose house is surrounded with other buildings to cast waste water upon the adjacent roofs or yards," and notes it is "similar to the common law" counterpart — though the entry is truncated and does not complete the comparison.
The incompleteness of the Black's entry is itself a research flag: the analogy to common law doctrine was apparently intended but not stated. The most probable intended comparison is to the common law easement of drainage (sometimes called the easement to discharge surface water), which permits water to flow across a neighbor's land in its natural or customary course. The civil law version, however, is narrower in origin and more tightly tied to the physical configuration of the properties.
Classical Roman law sources — Digest 8.2 (De servitutibus praediorum urbanorum) — treat aquae immittendae as one of several standard urban servitudes alongside the right to discharge rainwater from eaves (stillicidium) and the right to lead a drain across a neighbor's land (cloacae immittendae). Researchers working in jurisdictions that received Roman law should consult those civilian sources directly rather than relying solely on common law dictionary analogies.
Jurisdictional Note
This easement has practical legal significance primarily in civilian or mixed jurisdictions — Louisiana, Quebec, and historically Scots law. In purely common law jurisdictions, the concept is absorbed into general drainage easement doctrine and the term itself is not used as a term of art.