A strip of land between a holiday camp and a garage had been conveyed as an intended roadway. It had not been fenced. A plot of land was sold by the previous farmer to the garage. Later the plaintiffs bought the farm, excluding the roadway, and the disputed land. They farmed the disputed land for several years. The garage was sold to the defendants, but the land remained unidentified, and the plaintiffs continued to farm it. The new road was abandoned, and the defendants tried to sell the disputed land to the plaintiffs. When they sought to fence the land, the action was begun, claiming possessory title, but failed. The plaintiffs appealed.
Held: The owners of the disputed land had left it unoccupied for the purposes of eventual use in connection with the proposed new road and there had been no sufficient ouster of the owners so as to create 12 years’ adverse possession within the Limitation Act 1939. The appeal failed.
Lord Denning MR, Stamp and Ormrod L.JJ.
[1974] 3 WLR 387, [1975] QB 94
lip
England and Wales
Citing:
Applied – Leigh v Jack CA 11-Dec-1879
The plaintiff’s predecessor in title (Mr Leigh) had laid out part of his estate as proposed streets to be known as Grundy Street and Napier Place. He conveyed to the defendant certain land described as being ‘bounded by’ Grundy Street and Napier . .
Applied – Williams Brothers Direct Supply Ltd v Raftery CA 1957
In a claim for the adverse possession of land, the court is to determine whether the acts of user do or do not amount to dispossession of the owner, the character of the land, the nature of the acts done on it and the intention of the squatter must . .
Cited by:
Cited – Buckinghamshire County Council v Moran CA 13-Feb-1989
The parties’ respective properties were separated by a fence or hedge and the true owner had no access to the disputed land. In 1967 the Defendants’ predecessors in title began to maintain the land by mowing the grass and trimming the hedges and . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land, Limitation
Updated: 05 December 2021; Ref: scu.174048
