RURAL LAND DISPUTES

• An important judicial decision for one of Europe’s largest soft fruit companies, which protected its private right of way following a five-day trial. The Defendant landowners unsuccessfully appealed to the Court of Appeal as a result of which our client’s express right of way to its farmland was protected.
• Acting for a Wiltshire farmer in dispute with a neighbouring landowner on the correct interpretation of a legal boundary in a conveyance. The case involved detailed analysis of title deeds, Ordnance Survey maps, GPS mapping data and evidence from multiple witnesses. The case was successfully resolved at mediation including a payment of a large lump sum to our farming client.
• Successfully represented a Leicestershire Estate on a claim for an injunction and damages arising from a neighbouring landowner’s breach of a restrictive covenant by building houses. The case involved detailed argument on the correct way to value our client’s damages arising from the breach.
• Acting for a Buckinghamshire farmer is a dispute with a neighbouring family land owner concerning the legal boundary between their properties. The case involved multiple proceedings and a reference to the First Tier Tribunal. It was settled to our client’s satisfaction shorty before trial.
• Advising a Hampshire landowner and successfully defending a claim brought against her that a boundary had moved under the law of adverse possession. The case involved an implied boundary agreement and the ‘hedge and ditch’ rule.
• Winning a trial on behalf of a farmer against his former girlfriend who, it was said, he had gifted some land. Following a two-day trial our farming client was successful in demonstrating that the land was not a gift, but he was part owner of the land under trust. The case involved an application and order for sale of the land under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 and our client was also entitled to recover his legal costs.
• Advising a Surrey based farming business on a claim by neighbouring landowners that the physical boundary was in the wrong place and did not reflect the legal boundary. The case was resolved without the need for court proceedings.
• Acting for a Gloucestershire land owner in a claim concerning the correct location of a legal boundary shown in an historic deed. The case involved GPS mapping and expert witness determination.
• Acting for a landowner after a neighbour blocked the way across agricultural land, causing major difficulties in access. We successfully proved the existence of a prescriptive right of way through more than 20 years’ historic, undocumented usage of an all-purposes right of way.
• Acting for three owners of agricultural land, successfully defending against a neighbour’s claim of a prescriptive right of way across their land. This right of way would have included rights to cross through their gardens with cars, horses and carts, with serious potential valuation consequences.
• Advising an owner of farm land on whether his right of way allowed him various rights of entry/exit points along the full length of a route, following his neighbour’s effort to impose one specific entry/exit point, potentially causing substantial interference with the usage of the land.
• Advising a commercial unit owner on whether to grant temporary access permission to defeat a neighbour’s claim for a prescriptive right of way. The claim was resolved, thereby preserving the development potential of the land and avoiding neighbours’ attempts to prevent development by claiming to have undocumented rights of way.

Our expertise in this area encompasses: