A racing tout used the public highway which crossed the plaintiff’s property to watch racehorses being trained on the plaintiff’s land. On a particular occasion he walked backwards and forwards on a portion of the highway 15 yards long for a period of about one and a half hours watching and taking notes of the trials of race horses on the plaintiff’s land.
Held: A man resting at the side of the road, or taking a sketch from the highway, would not be a trespasser. The defendant’s activities, however, fell outside ‘an ordinary and reasonable user of the highway’ and so amounted to a trespass.
Smith LJ said: ‘Unless what the defendant did comes within the ordinary and reasonable use of a highway as such and is therefore lawful, it is clear that it would be a trespass’.
Collins LJ (applying Esher’s judgment) ‘in modern times a reasonable extension has been given to the use of the highway as such . . The right of the public to pass and repass on a highway is subject to all those reasonable extensions which may from time to time be recognised as necessary to its exercise in accordance with the enlarged notions of people in a country becoming more populous and highly civilised, but they must be such as are not inconsistent with the maintenance of the paramount idea that the right of the public is that of passage.’
A L Smith, Collins, Romer LJJ
[1900] 1 QB 752, [1900] UKLawRpKQB 54
Commonlii
England and Wales
Citing:
Applied – Harrison v Duke of Rutland CA 8-Dec-1893
H used a public highway crossing the defendant’s land, to disrupt grouse-shooting upon the defendant’s land. He complained after he had been forcibly restrained by the defendant’s servants from doing so. The defendant justified his actions saying . .
Cited by:
Cited – Director of Public Prosecutions v Jones and Lloyd HL 4-Mar-1999
21 people protested peacefully on the verge of the A344, next to the perimeter fence at Stonehenge. Some carried banners saying ‘Never Again,’ ‘Stonehenge Campaign 10 years of Criminal Injustice’ and ‘Free Stonehenge.’ The officer in charge . .
Cited – Jones and Lloyd v Director of Public Prosecutions Admn 23-Jan-1997
The appellants had been peacefully protesting at Stonehenge. They were among others who refused to leave when ordered to do so under an order made by the police officer in charge declaring it to be a trespassory assembly under the 1986 Act. They . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land, Torts – Other
Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.192189