Pensioner's ‘ridiculous' seven-year £280k court fight with neighbour over tiny strip of land

Independent

2 days ago

An angry pensioner has lost a "ridiculous" £280,000 fight with her doctor neighbour over "inches" of "dead space" separating their homes, with a judge slamming the tiny strip as "not worth arguing about".
Christel Naish, 81, and her neighbour, Dr Jyotibala Patel, fought a bitter seven-year court war after Ms Naish complained that Dr Patel's garden tap and pipe were "trespassing" on the tiny strip of land between their houses, which she claimed she owned.
The dispute escalated into a costly boundary dispute, with the neighbours arguing over a "few inches" of "dead space" - barely enough for a person to squeeze into sideways - between their houses in Ilford, east London.
They each laid claim to the strip, with a judge at Mayors and City County Court finding for Dr Patel and her husband, Vasos Vassili, last year.
But Ms Naish fought on - in what High Court judge Sir Anthony Mann branded a "ridiculous" dispute - only to have her case thrown out this week at the High Court.
Rejecting her appeal, Sir Anthony said the disputed strip of land between the houses is "dead space, and one would have thought it was not worth arguing about."
The court heard Ms Naish first moved into the semi in Chadacre Avenue as a teenager with her parents and, although she moved out, frequently returned as she worked from there in the family's tarmac business.
She eventually moved back permanently after the death of her father in 2001, with Dr Patel and husband Vasos Vassili buying the house next door for £450,000 in 2013.
The couple's barrister, Paul Wilmshurst, told the judge that the dispute began due to Ms Naish repeatedly complaining that a tap and pipe outside their house trespassed on her land.
They felt forced to sue their neighbour, believing they couldn't sell their property due to "the blight" on it from the unresolved row, he said.
At the county court, they claimed the tiny gap between the houses, created when the previous owners of their home built an extension on a previously much wider gap in 1983, was theirs.
They insisted that the boundary between the two properties was the flank wall of Ms Naish's house and not the edge of her guttering hanging above, as she claimed.
After hearing the trial, Judge Hellman found for Dr Patel and Mr Vassili, ruling that Ms Naish's flank wall was the boundary and meaning they own the gap between the houses.
However, he found against them on Ms Naish's counterclaim, under which she sought damages for damp ingress into her conservatory caused by them having installed decking above the level of her damp proof course.
The judge found that, although the damp problem was already in existence, the installation of the decking screed was a 20% contribution to it, and awarded Ms Naish £1,226 damages.
However, because he had found against her on who owns the gap between the houses, he ordered that she pay 65% of her neighbours' lawyers' bills - amounting to about £100,000 of an approximate £150,000 bill - on top of a similar six-figure sum she ran up herself.
Concluding his judgment, he said: "Now that the parties have the benefit of a judgment on the various issues that have been troubling them, I hope that tensions will subside and that they will be able to live together as good neighbours."
However, Ms Naish continued to fight and took her case to the High Court in May, which Sir Anthony blasted as bringing "litigation into disrepute" since Ms Naish no longer has any problems with the tap and pipe, meaning the row is over "dead space."
The court heard the legal costs of the appeal process itself would add more than £30,000 to the total cost of the case.
"Hundreds of thousands of pounds about a tap and a pipe that doesn't matter," Sir Anthony told Ms Naish's lawyers during the appeal hearing.
"You don't care about the pipe and the tap, so why does it matter, for goodness' sake, where the boundary lies?
"It seems to me to be a ridiculous piece of litigation - on both sides, no doubt."
Appealing, Ms Naish's lawyers argued that Judge Hellman had considered the issue of where the boundary lies in the wrong way, without taking notice of the fact that both houses were already built when crucial conveyancing documents were drawn up.
The judge should have looked at the houses and decided that a reasonable buyer would expect the boundary to lie a few inches past Ms Naish's wall so that her overhanging guttering was over the land.
Giving judgment, Sir Anthony said he disagreed with Judge Hellman's reasoning, but had come to the same decision - that the boundary ran along the line of Ms Naish's house and so the land belongs to her neighbours.
"I think that a purchaser standing with the plan in his/her hand and looking at the position on the ground is unlikely to look much beyond the obvious flank wall of the house. That would be an obvious boundary feature which fitted with the plan.
"I do not think the parties would cast their eyes upwards and see the guttering and re-shape their view of the boundary to the plane of the exterior face of the guttering. That does not seem particularly plausible.
"Nor do I think that the purchaser would be aware that foundations protruded beyond the flank wall - if indeed they do, there was no actual evidence of that, only a bit of speculation on the probabilities.
"So the natural view of the boundary at this point would be the flank wall. It is the obvious topographical feature which bears on the question.
"In my view, the judge reached the right conclusion on the position of the boundary, albeit my reasoning differs from his."
The judge rejected Ms Naish's appeal and also dismissed her challenge to the decision on the damp issue, under which she was claiming extra damages.
"The judge's conclusion was that 20% of the damp problem was attributable to the claimants' decking and he was entitled to reach that view," he said.
"It is particularly undesirable that this already unfortunate litigation should be cluttered up by such unworthy points taken on this appeal."
Ms Naish's appeal against the amount of her neighbours' costs she must pay will be decided at a later date.