A £250,000 seven-year neighbours’ row over a few inches of land sparked by a doctor’s garden tap has been blasted as “ridiculous” by a top judge.
Pensioner Christel Naish and her neighbor, Dr. Jyotibala Patel, have been embroiled in a contentious legal dispute over a narrow strip of land between their homes, which is too tight for a person to comfortably pass through.
Ms. Naish raised concerns that Dr. Patel’s garden tap and pipe were intruding onto her property in Ilford, East London, ultimately leading to a costly court case.
After a hearing at the Mayors and City County Court last year, Christel faced over £200,000 in legal expenses when the judge ruled in favor of Jyotibala.
But Ms Naish, 81, is now fighting on, despite being told that the case could end up costing about £500,000 if she wins.
After the trial, Christel had to pay around 65% of her neighbours’ costs, totalling around £100,000 on top of the six-figure sum she ran up herself.
However the appeal itself is costing more than £30,000, the High Court heard, and her lawyers say it could result in “another £200,000” being blown on a second trial if she succeeds.
At the High Court, senior judge Sir Anthony Mann blasted the parties for the “ridiculous” row after hearing that the tap and pipe issue which began the dispute did not even matter any more, with the tap having now been removed by Dr Patel.
Senior judge Mann said: “Hundreds of thousands of pounds about a tap and a pipe that doesn’t matter – this brings litigation into disrepute.
“You don’t care about the pipe and the tap, so why does it matter, for goodness’ sake, where the boundary lies?
“It seems to me to be a ridiculous piece of litigation – on both sides, no doubt.”
The court heard Ms Naish first moved into her semi-detached house in Chadacre Avenue as a teenager with her parents and, although she moved out, frequently returned as she worked there in the family’s tarmac business.
She eventually moved back permanently after the death of her father in 2001, with Dr Patel and husband Vasos Vassili buying the house next door for £450,000 in 2013.
The couple’s barrister, Paul Wilmshurst, told the judge that the dispute began due to Ms Naish repeatedly complaining that a tap and pipe outside their house trespassed on her land.
Due to her “terrorising” them with her “petty and vindictive” complaints, they felt forced to sue due to the “blight” on the property’s value caused by the unresolved row, he said.
At the county court, they claimed the tiny gap between the houses – created when the previous owners of their home built an extension on a previously much wider gap in 1983 – was theirs.
They insisted that the boundary between the two properties was the flank wall of Ms Naish’s house and not the edge of her guttering hanging above, as she claimed.
But after hearing the trial in 2023, Judge Stephen Hellman last year found for Dr Patel and Mr Vassili, ruling that Ms Naish’s flank wall was the boundary and meaning they own the gap between the houses.
However, he found against them on Ms Naish’s counterclaim, under which she sought damages for damp ingress into her conservatory caused by them having installed decking above the level of her damp proof course.
The judge found that, although the damp problem was already in existence, the installation of the decking screed was a 20% contribution to it, and awarded Ms Naish £1,226 damages.
However, because he had found against her on who owns the gap between the houses, he ordered that she pay 65 per cent of her neighbours’ lawyers’ bills, amounting to about £100,000, on top of her own costs.
Concluding his judgment, he said: “Now that the parties have the benefit of a judgment on the various issues that have been troubling them, I hope that tensions will subside and that they will be able to live together as good neighbours.”
However, Ms Naish has continued to fight and took her case to the High Court for an appeal last week, with judge Sir Anthony Mann asking why the neighbours are pressing on and demanding of Ms Naish’s barrister David Mayall: “What is the point of this litigation?”
He replied: “To be frank, two things: costs and the damp issue,” with Dr Patel’s barrister Mr Wilmshurst adding that they feel they have to fight to protect the value of their home.
“It’s because for many years the appellant has been making allegations about the trespassing nature of the [tap and pipe], thereby making it impossible for them to sell their house,” he said.
For Ms Naish, Mr Mayall argued that Judge Hellman’s reasoning in finding that the boundary was the flank wall was “fatally flawed” and should be overturned, although noting a second trial in the event of a successful appeal would cost the parties “another £200,000.”
He said any “reasonable purchaser” looking at the houses when they were first built and conveyed in the 1950s would have assumed that the boundary was the edge of Ms Naish’s guttering, giving her a few inches extra land.
“The only proper conclusion that he could have come to when construing the original conveyance was that the boundary ran along the outermost part of the house as constructed, including the eaves, guttering and foundations,” he said.
“He most certainly could not have concluded that a reasonable person would have understood that the boundary was in such a place as to mean that part of the dwelling as constructed – the eaves, guttering and foundations – were immediately trespassing on the neighbouring land.”
He added: “They insisted that’s where the line lay. We said it certainly doesn’t lie there and we have been ordered to pay £100,000 in costs for the proceedings below.
“What we say is a reasonable purchaser would say, ‘I own the land over which these gutters lie.’ We say there was a fence running along, which was the distance away from the wall that the flank wall of [Dr Patel’s extension] is now.”
But for Dr Patel, who appeared in court, and Mr Vassili, who watched via a video link, Mr Wilmshurst said the appeal was a challenge to findings the judge was entitled to make on the evidence.
“Overall, the judge did not overlook the contention of the appellant as to guttering, eaves and foundations: he considered it directly, evaluated it, and rejected it as being material to where the boundary was,” he said.
“The judge correctly held that the legal boundary was shown by the conveyance plans as running along the flank wall of [Ms Naish’s house], not the outermost projection.
“The appellant does not suggest that there is rule of law that means that a boundary must be synonymous with the eaves, guttering or foundations.
“As shown in this case, the court received expert evidence from an experienced land surveyor that such a state of affairs is not unusual.
“This was a question of fact in this case for the judge to determine.”
On the issue of what contribution to Ms Naish’s damp her neighbours’ decking screed caused, he added: “There is no basis on which it can be properly said that the judge was wrong to find the concrete screed was only responsible for 20% of the damp problems.
“The judge also carried out a site view and was in the best position to form an assessment of the evidence.”
After a day in court, Sir Anthony reserved judgment on the appeal.
