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Malcolmson v O’Dea: HL 1863

A private fishery may be established by prescription.
Willes J said: ‘The soil of ‘navigable tidal rivers,’ like the Shannon, so far as the tide flows and reflows, is prima facie in the Crown, and the right of fishery prima facie in the public. But for Magna Charta, the Crown could, by its prerogative, exclude the public from such prima facie right, and grant the exclusive right of fishery to a private individual, either together with or distinct from the soil. And the great charter left untouched all fisheries which were made several, to the exclusion of the public, by Act of the Crown not later than the reign of Henry II.
If evidence be given of long enjoyment of a fishery, to the exclusion of others, of such a character as to establish that it has been dealt with as of right as a distinct and separate property, and there is nothing to show that its origin was modern, the result is not that you say, this is usurpation, for it is not traced back to the time of Henry II, but that you presume that the fishery being reasonably shown to have been dealt with as property, must have become such in due course of law, and therefore must have been created before legal memory.’

Willes J
(1863) 10 HL Cas 618
England and Wales
Cited by:
CitedLoose v Lynn Shellfish Ltd and Others CA 19-Jun-2014
The parties disputed the rights to take shellfish from the foreshore. Fishermen now appealed against a finding as to the extent of a private fishery from which they were excluded, in particular as to the rights overfomer sandbanks, at the western, . .
CitedLynn Shellfish Ltd and Others v Loose and Another SC 13-Apr-2016
The court was asked as to the extent of an exclusive prescriptive right (ie an exclusive right obtained through a long period of use) to take cockles and mussels from a stretch of the foreshore on the east side of the Wash, on the west coast of . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Land, Agriculture

Leading Case

Updated: 09 November 2021; Ref: scu.526741

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