Hazel Marshall QC discussed the idea of consent in adverse possession claims, saying that mere acquiescence in another’s use of one land is not the same as the grant of permission for that user for the purposes of the stopping time running in favour of an adverse possessor.
More generally: ‘Limitation is not so much about the acquisition of property by long user, ie someone getting a windfall, as about the loss of a right to claim property by the person who would otherwise be the owner on paper, but who has done nothing with it. It has always been a principle of English law that a person who owned land, but who, with another in occupation of it amounting to possession, failed for upwards of twelve years either to assert his own better right to possession, or to obtain a clear recognition of his title from the party in occupation (by means of a payment or other form of plain acknowledgment) simply lost his right to possession of that land.’
Judges:
Hazel Marshall QC J
Citations:
[2008] EWHC 3310 (Ch), [2009] 1 EGLR 93
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Zarb and Another v Parry and Another CA 15-Nov-2011
The parties disputed the position of the boundary between their neighbouring properties. The appellant Z had succeeded in establishing that the the boundary was as they decribed on paper, but the respondents had succeeded in their claim for adverse . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land
Updated: 27 September 2022; Ref: scu.396461