Definition
1. (Property / Easement Law) An easement or servitude by which the owner of a dominant tenement has the right to allow water falling from the roof of a building to drip onto the land of an adjacent owner (the servient tenement). The right obligates the servient landowner to receive and tolerate that falling water. Without such a right acquired by express grant or prescription, a property owner has no legal authority to construct or maintain a building so that rainwater or roof runoff drips onto a neighbor's land.
2. (Corporate / Securities Law — Modern Usage) An acronym for Dividend Reinvestment Plan, a program offered by corporations allowing shareholders to automatically reinvest cash dividends into additional shares of stock, often at a discount and without brokerage commissions. This meaning is entirely modern and does not appear in historical legal dictionaries.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In ordinary modern English, "drip" functions both as a verb meaning to fall in drops and as an acronym — DRIP — referring to a Dividend Reinvestment Plan.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To fall in drops; to let fall drops of moisture or liquid.
The legal easement meaning of DRIP is a direct technical extension of the physical act of water falling — the legal term names the right that governs that physical event. Researchers should not assume that modern financial uses of the acronym DRIP have any connection to the property law concept of the same name; the two meanings are entirely unrelated in origin and application.
Common Confusion
DRIP and STILLICIDIUM are the same concept, the latter being the Roman civil law antecedent from which the common law easement derives. Historical sources, particularly Burrill, use stillicidium as the primary entry and treat drip as its English translation. Researchers consulting civil law sources or early treatises will encounter stillicidium where common law sources say drip. The two terms are interchangeable in substance, but they signal different source traditions — common law versus civilian — and may appear in entirely separate sections of historical dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Do not confuse the easement of drip with the related easement of eavesdrop (stillicidii), which in some jurisdictions historically referred to the right to allow eaves to overhang a neighbor's land rather than simply to permit falling water. The distinction matters in older pleadings and conveyancing instruments.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in property law, easements, or nuisance will encounter DRIP primarily in materials dealing with urban land use, party walls, and the arrangement of buildings on adjacent lots — contexts where roof runoff becomes a live dispute. The term is sparse in modern American case law because the underlying disputes are more often resolved under nuisance doctrine or local building codes than under the formal easement label.
The historical sources uniformly cite Kent's Commentaries (vol. 3) as the leading American authority. Researchers following that citation should note that Kent's discussion draws heavily on the Roman law concept of stillicidium and on English common law, making this a point where civil law and common law traditions explicitly converge in American property doctrine.
In older materials, creation of a drip easement by prescription requires the same elements as any prescriptive easement — open, continuous, and adverse use for the statutory period — but the continuity element presents interpretive difficulty because roof runoff is necessarily seasonal and weather-dependent. Historical sources do not resolve this tension explicitly, and researchers should watch for jurisdiction-specific treatment in treatises and equity decisions.
For researchers using Law Mind, connections run to EASEMENT (the parent concept), SERVITUDE, STILLICIDIUM, and NUISANCE. Anderson's Dictionary of Law adds no independent definition, redirecting entirely to EASEMENT — a signal that in the late nineteenth century this was treated as a subspecies of easement doctrine rather than a freestanding concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree almost entirely on substance. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Burrill all define drip as an easement or servitude permitting roof water from one structure to fall on an adjacent owner's land, and all cite Kent's Commentaries vol. 3, p. 436 as the primary American authority.
Bouvier adds the most practical detail: he specifies that the right must be acquired by grant or prescription, and cites 1 Rolle's Abridgment 107 and the Digest (43.23.4.6) alongside Kent — flagging the civilian pedigree explicitly. Burrill identifies the Latin term stillicidium and notes the servitude derives from the civil law, making the Roman law connection clearest of the four substantive entries.
None of the historical dictionaries address the question of how drip interacts with modern building codes or municipal regulations, nor do they discuss the easement's fate in jurisdictions that have largely subsumed such disputes into nuisance or trespass doctrine. These silences are significant for researchers: the formal easement label survives in treatises longer than it does in reported cases.
Jurisdictional Note
The drip easement as a distinct recognized category appears more prominently in jurisdictions with strong civil law influence (particularly Louisiana) where the Roman law heritage of stillicidium remains more explicitly embedded in property doctrine. In most common law American jurisdictions, modern courts are more likely to analyze roof runoff disputes under nuisance, trespass, or surface water drainage rules than to invoke the drip easement by name.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Easements — Creation and Classification; Servitudes (Civil Law Origins in American Property Law)