Land law thoughts: warning – almost completely not about Legal History!

Two areas of legal interest which are more frequently covered by the right wing press than the rest of what used to be called ‘Fleet Street’ are (i) succession (when there is a family dispute); and (ii) neighbour disputes. I think there’s a Ph.D. or at least a dissertation for somebody on the way these are covered, but until it appears, here is a start in pulling together some thoughts on the neighbour disputes ones, prompted by a report in this morning’s Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6172095/Neighbours-ten-year-war-30-inch-parking-space-ends-warring-parties-paying-bills.htmlc

The case involved use of a parking space at a property in Berkshire. If the owner parked in a particular part of the space, that restricted or denied access to the neighbouring property’s back garden.

As it’s the Daily Mail, and I have read a number of such articles there, I was not surprised to see the piece highlighting the following:

• The amount of money spent on legal action (£120,000)
• The length of the dispute (10 years)
• Descriptions of the disputed land: ‘a 30 inch parking space’ (imperial, obviously) and ‘a thin strip of concrete’ (concrete – a bit modern and insignificant). In fact, although it almost suggests this is an ownership issue, it isn’t: it’s an easement case.
• A kick for lawyers, even though the piece also makes it clear that it could have been settled amicably, and the parties are ‘stubborn pensioners’ (not quite on-brand there, Daily Mail) who have engaged in ‘bickering’ and a ‘frenzy’ of legal action. The implication seems to be that lawyers encouraged the legal action (those ‘pettifogging’ slurs go deep into history) even though I would be very surprised if lawyers involved in such a case did not try and encourage the parties to come to a sensible agreement.
• Legal bills described as ‘eye watering’ – without any context as to what was provided by the lawyers (over ten years?). It may be that they over-charged, but it isn’t possible to tell from this. The disproportion is really between the value of the land/right in question and the amount of money: and unless the evil lawyers were forcing the parties to litigate against all reason, that’s hardly their fault.
• A photograph of the ‘winner’, who gets the right to use the path: pictured with a walking aid, though, in fact, according to the story, he does not live at the property, but rents it out. In a way, this makes the story look like ‘nasty people stop mobility-impaired man using access to his house’, when it is more ‘people use car space in a way which potentially reduces financial gain on second home’.
• Extra facts – the applicant ‘lives with his wife’ in an ‘impressive £1.5 million 5 bedroomed house in nearby village of Cookham. The losing respondents, however, had moved down South from Scotland. This may help the DM reader to decide who is the more sympathetic ‘stubborn pensioner’ in the dispute.

A more legal explanation (including the fact that it’s about easements and prescription – lost modern grants, Prescription Act and all that getting an airing) can be seen at: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWLandRA/2018/2017_0077.pdf

This is the judgment of the Land Registration Tribunal. Here, we have metric measurements (the horror!) and some ‘nice points’ about exactly how acquiescence is to be understood (still a bit unsatisfactory, it seems to me, but let’s leave that for now), but  almost no criticism of lawyers (it does in fact speak of solicitors ‘taking up the cudgels’ after initial disputes between the parties (para 12) – which seems a little unnecessarily fighting talk-ish). Nothing about Scotland, or the applicant’s ‘impressive’ home.

Lots to compare and contrast, and the makings of an interesting study, if more examples were included.