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Accountant forced to rip out central heating after neighbour row backfires
An accountant was forced to rip out the central heating from her Oxfordshire cottage after a row with her neighbour backfired, a court has heard.
Helen Faber sued her neighbour over a “nuisance” fence which she claimed had encroached on a shared path by 40cm.
But the legal action had a counterproductive result when a judge threw out her claim and instead found she had herself encroached on the path with a patio and oil central heating pipe.
Ms Faber and her husband, Dominic Miles, were ordered to rip up the patio and the pipe – rendering their central heating useless – at Oxford County Court.
The couple are now challenging the ruling at the High Court.
Mr Justice Richard Smith heard last week that Ms Faber and Mr Miles own the £375,000 Pear Tree Cottage in Wardington, Oxfordshire, which has right of way on a footpath owned by Richard and Katherine Reid, who live next door at Forge Cottage.
In 2021, the couple returned to the countryside cottage from France to find a fence put in by Mr and Mrs Reid had “narrowed” the 4ft-wide path by 40cm.
They said the fence was a “nuisance” because it would make it more difficult to carry a “large picnic tray laden with food and drinks...without spilling the drinks” to a patio at the rear of their garden.
Ms Faber and Mr Miles brought a claim at Oxford County Court claiming that the new fence was a “substantial interference” with their use of the shared right of way.
But the move backfired when Judge Melissa Clarke ruled there was no “nuisance” and also found they had installed a patio and oil pipe that constituted “trespasses” on the footpath.
“An oil line running from an oil tank in the Pear Tree Cottage second garden is on, over and under parts of the right of way,” Judge Clarke told the hearing.
“The claimants now accept that the right of way is owned by Forge Cottage. The installation by the claimants of an oil line over the right of way is a trespass on the land of Forge Cottage and the defendants are entitled to an injunction requiring the claimants to remove it.”
She said the pipeline was “susceptible to damage” and that, if damaged, any oil leaks would contaminate Mr and Mrs Reid’s land, which was a risk they “should not have to tolerate from trespass”.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/accountant-forced-rip-central-heating-112654833.html
Comments
They nearly always start the same way. At 1 time the neighbours were civil to 1 another-maybe even friends. Then 1, seemingly insignificant thing (at least, to me) causes this to change to open warfare.
Both sides always see things as a mirror image of 1 another. They are totally reasonable, while their neighbour is a terrible person who no sane man (or even Judge) would believe for a second.
My advice always started the same way. When people choose to go to Court, and spend more money than they could ever hope to gain, then they tend to be sure in their own minds they are right. True for my Client. Equally true for the other side. Ultimately, a Judge does not decide who is "right" and who is "wrong". They have 2 different versions of events. And they have to decide which one is more than 50%. And which less than 50%. And the "winner" may be 50.1%, rather than 49.9%. And it is in the very nature of the English legal system, that one man's "justice" necessitates another man's "injustice".
Why did I say all that? It might, just might, have caused 1 person not to spend thousands of pounds on little more than a point of principle. But mainly it was to protect me. No-one ever loses because they were unlucky. Or that the other side came across as more believable than them. It is always someone else's fault. Usually the Judge or their Solicitor
Nearly 60 years ago our legal lecturer said at our first lecture "when a client walks into a solicitors office and say it's a matter of principal" the solicitor orders his new Rolls Royce.
It is something that has stuck in my mind ever since.
1. Criminal Law lecturer starting with a statement that, obviously, none of us would ever commit a serious crime. To which I piped up:-"hang on. How much money, and how likely am I to get caught?" To which he replied-"Sorry Phil. I forgot you were from Essex"
2. Civil Litigation lecturer. Droning on. Wasp crawled into my sock and stung me. Causing me to swear. Very loudly. To which lecturer said. "Sorry Phil. I know this bit is pretty boring, but that's a bit harsh..."
Whereas I could only remember cases if they interested me. Like this Health & Safety case. Window cleaner. Stepped on to a ledge for the first 168 Flats in a block of flats. The 169th had no ledge. He didn't look-you wouldn't, would you? It was on the 22nd floor...
A much cheaper option.
They said the fence was a “nuisance” because it would make it more difficult to carry a “large picnic tray laden with food and drinks...without spilling the drinks” to a patio at the rear of their garden.