Securities firms like the rule because they feel it eliminates so-called stale claims.

However, justifications for adverse possession go beyond "property is theft" and "stale claims".

Where lawyers see legal doctrines that prevent the filing of stale claims and the presentation of irrelevant evidence, he sees a conspiracy to silence the truth.

Such startling intrusions of the grotesque form a taunting rejoinder to the sterile, stale claims of socialist idealism.

The FSA was not legally able to circumvent statute yet hid behind secret legal opinion regarding its summary removal of practitioners' legal rights in respect of their ability to use a longstop defence against stale claims.

Questions of possession/non-possession are not only crucial in cases of stale claims but have, since the 1985 House of Lords decision in Street v Mountford [1985]AC 809, been fundamental in decisions about whether an occupier of property is categorised as a "tenant" or a "licensee".

Mark Herr, a spokesman for Merrill Lynch, said that Mr. Fastow's declaration was "produced at a time when he was seeking a more lenient sentence" and "should be seen for what it is: a series of unproved and stale claims that have not been tested in open court or been subject to cross-examination."