1903. The privileged claims upon immovables are hereinafter enumerated, and rank in the following order:––
1. Law costs and the expenses incurred for the common interest of the creditors;
2. Funeral expenses, such as declared in article 1896, when the proceeds of the movable property have proved insufficient to pay them;
3. The expenses of the last illness, such as declared in article 1897, and subject to the same restriction as funeral expenses;
4. The amount of advances made, or value of supplies furnished for tilling, sowing, planting, cultivating, reaping, curing, milling, ginning and manufacturing or claim of metayers for tilling, sowing, planting, and cultivating;
5. Municipal and local taxes;
6. The claim of the builder, subject to the provisions of article 1905;
7. The claim of the vendor;
8. Salaries and wages of managers, overseers and servants, for a period not exceeding 3 months;
9. Wages of labourers for a period not exceeding one month. (Amended by Act 4 of 1908)
1904. The privilege for advances made or supplies furnished for the cultivation of an estate and for the growing crop, including the advances and supplies for reaping, curing, milling, ginning and manufacturing and for the purchase of crops to be manufactured, exists upon the crop and upon the produce of such crop and of all crops purchased from cane farmers or otherwise and the produce thereof, and also, if such crop be not taken off before the time of the sale of the estate, upon the estate or property upon which the crop is growing, provided that the advances be made or the supplies be furnished by virtue of an order of the Judge which authorises the amount of such advances or supplies or both. The privilege in the case of the sale of the estate exists to the extent only of the additional value given to the estate through such expenditure. Metayers have a privileged claim for the value of their crop on the registration of their contracts which must be made in authentic form or signed before a Magistrate. (Substituted by Act 7 of 1952)
1905. Builders, or other workmen, and architects have a right of preference over the vendor and all other creditors, only upon the additional value given to the immovable by their works, provided an official statement establishing the state of the premises on which the works are to be made, have been previously made by an expert appointed by the Judge, and that within 6 months from their completion such works have been accepted and received by an expert appointed in the same manner, which acceptance and reception must be established by another official statement containing also a valuation of the work done; and in no case does the privilege extend beyond the value ascertained by such second statement, and it is reducible to the amount of the additional value which the immovable has at the time of the sale.
In case the proceeds are insufficient to pay the builder and the vendor, or in cases of contestation, the additional value given to the property by the buildings is established by a relative valuation effected in the manner prescribed in the Code of Civil Procedure.
1906. The vendor has a privilege upon the immovable sold for all the price due to him or her.
If there have been several successive sales, the prices of which are wholly or partly due, the first vendor is preferred to the second, the second to the third, and so on.
The same right extends:
To donors, for the payments and charges stipulated in their favour;
To co-partitioners, coheirs, and co-legatees upon the immovables which they owned in common, for the warranty of the partitions made between them and of the differences to be paid.