Agriculture Monthly Review: December 2010

As Christmas and the New Year holiday approaches, it is often difficult to see what lies beyond. For many clients, the holidays are a natural target date for the completion of a transaction or piece of legal work and so it is often the case that a lawyer’s workload increases as the holiday approaches. Exactly the opposite of what you would want!

 

However, at this time of year the agricultural industry locally always looks beyond holidays to the LAMMA Show which will be held on 19 and 20 January at Newark Showground. Unbelievably, this huge show which had its roots in modest Lincolnshire soil has become one of the largest of its type in Europe. It has even supplanted the traditional Smithfield Show!

 

It is always an important date in the Langleys calendar and we are looking forward to being there as usual to meet many old friends and clients. It would be nice, though, if the weather were a little warmer….!

 

Despite the preparations for Christmas, Hogmanay and LAMMA, developments in the law plough on inextricably. I have written about the problems caused by rights of way in this column before but they refuse to go away.

 

In a recent case called Wilkinson –v- Farmer the Court of Appeal was required to adjudicate upon the extent of a right of way originally reserved in an 1898 Conveyance. It would appear that the plan attached 1898 Conveyance was not drawn to scale and did not include any measurements. You might think that this is hardly surprising. However, at the point whether the right of way joined the public highway, there was a gap between two properties which was exactly 11 foot 8 inches wide and further down the track, it narrowed at a gateway which was 10 foot wide. However, in other places it widened to well over 20 foot and a dispute arose between the landowner and the person exercising the right of way as to it’s full extent.

 

The land had been registered with the Land Registry and the problem first went to the Land Registry Adjudicator who, having heard the evidence, decided in favour of the narrower version of the right of way.

 

The disappointed party then appealed and the Judge, reviewing all the evidence and other Conveyances decided that the right of way was over the whole of the strip of land to its wider extent. Despite this decision, a further appeal was made to the Court of Appeal and the Judges reinstated the original decision of the Land Registry Adjudicator!

 

The facts of the case are interesting to a point but, as with all private right of way cases, the matter turns on the individual facts of the case. There were no fundamental principles of law at stake. One wonders therefore what drove these litigants to take a relatively minor dispute over the extent of a right of way all the way to the Court of Appeal? The costs will have been horrendous and it is extremely difficult to see how either party could justify the expense in any commercial or economic way. Indeed, the Court of Appeal confirmed that “professional advisers have a duty to warn their clients at an early stage about the downside of neighbour litigation, even for a successful party”. It is my experience that lawyers invariably do warn clients about the cost of this type of litigation but unfortunately “principles” and other perceived injustices come to outweigh commercial reality.

 

Those who are contemplating an excursion in such litigation might do well to remember the seasonal message: “Peace and goodwill to all men”.