16-05-2025
Neighbours' ‘ridiculous' 7-year garden row racks up £250,000 in legal bills
A seven-year row between neighbours has been slammed as 'ridiculous' by a senior judge.
The bitter court fight - which has now racked up £250,000 in legal bills - concerns a strip between two houses in east London.
Christel Naish, 81, has argued that her doctor neighbour Jyotibala Patel's garden tap and pipe were 'trespassing' on her property.
Following a costly boundary dispute, a judge at Mayors and Cirt County Court last year ruled in Dr Patel's favour.
But she is now fighting on at the High Court, despite being told that the case could end up costing about £500,000 if she wins – more than Dr Patel paid for her house.
The only person who listens to both sides of an argument is the next door neighbour.
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According to the Metro, the pensioner had been left having to fork out for 65% of her neighbours' costs, amounting to around £100,000, on top of the six-figure sum she ran up herself.
However, the appeal is costing more than £30,000, the High Court heard, and her lawyers say it could result in 'another £200,000' being blown on a second trial if she succeeds.
Senior judge Sir Anthony Mann said of the case this week: 'Hundreds of thousands of pounds about a tap and a pipe that doesn't matter – this brings litigation into disrepute.
'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.'
Dr Patel and her husband, Vasos Vassili, bought the house next door to Ms Naish 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.
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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.
Judge Stephen Hellman last year found for Dr Patel and Mr Vassili, ruling that Ms Naish's flank wall was the boundary and therefore, they own the gap between the houses.
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.'
