looks like they maybe lost access to an easy exit. i’m imagining they probably drove in and out where the curb ( kerb? ) lets down, which would be on the property the neighbor claims.
2 Likes
The fence wasn’t moved. It was removed. That’s what the guy got arrested for. I’m not sure what the 0.8m is showing. The fence is in line with what appears to be the property line.
5 Likes
Maybe we can settle this with a court case?!
1 Like
Yeah, the fact that it went to mediation and he lost tells me a lot.
5 Likes
I suspect it’s the extra space wanted to accommodate the difference in vehicle sizes in that picture! If the purple line in the post by @lastchance is what this couple was arguing for, what little sympathy I might have felt for them is long gone.
Yup. Time to move some plants and pave that patch of grass (or make sure their vehicle can navigate a 1.8m drive).
4 Likes
#directaction
2 Likes
Kerb, in the UK.
It’s the conveyancing solicitor’s job to find out the boundary, not the purchaser’s.
In my experience these things are sometimes woolly. In English land law, there can be a restrictive covenant over a piece of land so that while you own it, you have to allow other people to access it.
IANAL, merely someone who’s had to deal with a number of property transactions. I presume the court decision was correct, meaning that there weren’t any relevant convenants. If so, the conveyancer was at fault.
8 Likes
Historically, the best way to illustrate such things was with a map. I guess perspectives have changed.
3 Likes
That’s a thing in American law too, it’s called an “easement” here. But they’re supposed to be explicitly spelled out in the deed when property transfers ownership.
7 Likes
Its looks like a very narrow driveway. They can choose to back in or back out, taking extra care not to damage the precious fence, or their home.
It could also be a trick of perspective.
2 Likes
This seems like the most likely explanation. I don’t see how the fence being there would be that big of a deal. Seems like they spent 45k to be very petty
1 Like
I think the .8 is supposed to show how the people who wasted all their money on this used to have more room to move into their drive before the fence.
@lastchance The picture with the purple line showing where they claim the boundary was is just. Wow. That’s not a reasonable belief. They just decided after the fence went up they had a right to the entire drive!
The guy sounds like a git. They didn’t lose their money, they wasted it.
You can see from the photo below they were using her drive to move their landboat in and out. Those are heavy and probably damaging the drive. I bet if she was alive, we’d hear a different story about how she tried to get them to stop using her drive for the RV and giant SUV. Sheesh. 45,000 pounds down the drain because they wouldn’t change the tiny planting in front of their house so they have enough room to get in and out. Or buy some reasonably sized vehicles. New neighbors better put up a new fence or that driveway is gonna be nothing but cracks and gravel.
6 Likes
Yeah, the saddest part of this story to me is that the elderly neighbor had to spend a lot of their limited remaining time on earth dealing with this legal nonsense.
7 Likes
Just quietly say that the last neighbor who tried to put up a fence is dead now.
4 Likes
Yes, exactly. Deeds aren’t always free of mistakes and omissions, though.
However, if you lose £45K in legal disputes over a fence, it’s probably because your case was weak but you kept pressing it anyway.
4 Likes
A survey in the UK would usually not establish the boundaries. At best they’d check the substance of the building. Most people don’t even get that, they just have the mortgage lender’s valuation survey.
That basically just checks whether the property exists, has a roof and walls and whether it is likely to be worth a bit more than the bank is offering to lend.
That may not help much. UK property deeds rarely mention boundaries, certainly not for a house in a town or village. The LR plans are expressly for identification purposes only and most plans on older conveyances are pretty useless for identifying boundaries in anything other than a general fashion.
For one thing the scale is usually such as to make a boundary surveyor sigh in disgust. Lines on the map translating to a strip of about 2m wide and so on.
Basically in the UK it’s not considered important in most cases to be able to determine a boundary to within more than a few feet.
By definition, you can’t lose a mediation. It’s a process where the parties try to reach an agreement. If they can’t agree, then they can’t. No one will make a decision or ruling.
ETA: If they really agreed something at mediation and then later went back on it, it just shows who was the problem here.
But the article also talks about a hearing which makes no sense if they settled it at mediation, so who knows…
Generally not true.
The solicitor will usually expressly state that they are not checking the boundaries and that that it is up to the buyer to check.
As you say though, if there was some mention that the driveway is shared, I would have expected some advice as to what that means, whether there is in fact any enforceable right to use the other half of the driveway and so on.
If that wasn’t provided then that would be negligence.
But of course they apparently purchased in the 80s so limitation would have run out ages ago.
2 Likes
A hearing could have ordered them to mediation rather than taking up the court’s resources with a trial. And you can lose at mediation. If the mediator says, “Well…sorry, this is pretty clear cut. You’re wrong and they’re right, so my suggestion is…drop your complaint and the fence stays,” then from the perspective of the guy who wanted the fence removed, that’s a loss. There is also such a thing as binding mediation, which is kind of like arbitration lite.
4 Likes
But in that context, if mediation was succesful, you wouldn’t need a further hearing. You’d just file a consent order and get the judge to rubberstamp it.
As so often with reports of legal disputes the story makes no sense and I’m not going to the Express to see if theirs is any better.
A mediator is really not supposed to do that - but, yes, they do. A client who is told at mediation that he’s in the wrong, has hopefully already been told that several times by his solicitor, and clearly doesn’t care.
Either way, it doesn’t resolve anything.
which is a mediation that turns into arbitration. Something quite different from a straightforward mediation.
2 Likes
Also, in a way, with both mediation and arbitration, everyone usually loses. My advanced negotiation skills professor in law school was a federal district court judge, Zahid Quraishi. He said if you see people leaving a courthouse, and they all look like their dog just died, that means they just settled their case out of court. No one really gets what they want in alternative dispute resolution. The only way you ever really get a winner is if you go to trial. Then, one side wins.
6 Likes
