Copeland v Greenhalf
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Date | 1952 |
| Year | 1952 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Easement - Claim of prescriptive right to store on neighbour's land vehicles awaiting and undergoing repair and vehicles awaiting collection after repair - Whether such right an easement in law.
The plaintiff was the owner of an orchard and an adjoining house. Access to the orchard from the road was had by a strip of land, which was about 150 feet long, with a width varying from 15 feet at the road entrance to 35 feet in the middle, and then contracting towards the orchard end. The defendant was a wheelwright, whose premises were opposite to the strip of land across the road, owned by the plaintiff.
The plaintiff brought an action against the defendant, claiming to restrain him from placing and leaving vehicles on the strip. The defendant claimed the right to do so, setting up a lost grant (which claim was not persisted in at trial) and a prescriptive right.
The defendant's claim, so far as proved at the trial, was that for 50 years he and his father before him had, with the knowledge of the plaintiff and of her predecessors in title, continuously stored along the strip, except for a space left for access to the orchard, customers' vehicles awaiting and undergoing repair, and awaiting collection after repair:—
Held, that the right exercised and claimed was too extensive to constitute an easement in law, as it amounted practically to a claim to the whole beneficial user of that part of the strip of land over which it had been exercised.
Per curiam: An easement may exist for the benefit of a business which is carried on from the dominant tenant; see Moody v. Steggles (
ACTION.
The plaintiff, Mrs. Janet Ethel Vivian Copeland, brought an action against the defendant, Robert Reginald Greenhalf, a wheelwright, for an injunction and a mandatory order to restrain him from continuing to exercise certain alleged rights over a strip of her land at Winchcomb in the county of Gloucester. The defendant claimed an easement to deposit vehicles on the strip of land.
The strip was about 150 feet in length, and led from North Street in the village of Winchcomb to an orchard known as Barebones Orchard. The strip varied in width, from 15 feet at the street end to a maximum of 35 feet rather more than halfway to the orchard, and then narrowing to 20 to 25 feet. It formed the normal and practical access to Barebones Orchard.
The plaintiff purchased the orchard and strip in May, 1946, and in 1949 she purchased an adjoining house. The defendant's workshop and dwelling-house were opposite to the strip and in part opposite to the plaintiff's house. At all material times before 1938 the orchard and strip were let to tenants; in 1942 the property was let to the plaintiff, who held it as tenant until she acquired the fee simple in 1946.
The defendant, by his defence as amended at the hearing, pleaded as follows: “(6) For a long time namely for 50 years and upwards before this action the defendant and his predecessors in title to the said house and workshop have by virtue of a deed of grant made unto them by the predecessors in title of the plaintiff who were then seised in fee simple of the plaintiff's said strip for the estate the plaintiff now has (but which deed has since been lost or destroyed by accident) enjoyed the right to place deposit and store and if necessary repair upon the plaintiff's said strip along the south-east side thereof alongside the wall or fence there and so as not to extend beyond a distance of 8 ft. 6 ins. inwards from such fence or wall or obstruct or interfere with access for all purposes from and to Barebones orchard to and from North Street carts carriages and other wheeled vehicles of wooden or partly wooden construction cartwheels and farm implements at all times for the more convenient use and occupation of the defendant's said house and workshop. (7) Alternatively the defendant was and is possessed of the said house and workshop and by reason of such possession is and was at all material times entitled as of right to place deposit and store and if necessary repair upon the plaintiff's said strip along the south-east side thereof alongside the wall or fence there and so as not to extend beyond a distance of 8 ft. 6 ins. inwards from such wall or fence or obstruct or interfere with access from and to Barebones orchard from and to North Street carts carriages and other vehicles of wooden or partly wooden construction cartwheels and other farm implements in the manner and for the purpose aforesaid and the defendant and his predecessors in title to and the several occupiers of the said house and workshop have for the full periods of 20 and 40 years respectively next preceding the commencement of this action enjoyed as of right and without interruption the said right to place deposit and store and repair as aforesaid and the defendant claims the right so to do as a legal right under section 2 of the
The effect of the defendant's claim and of the evidence was summarized as follows in the judgment: “In my judgment, the defendant has proved up to the hilt the practice which he has claimed, except this, that the practice was not limited so as not to extend beyond a distance of 8 ft. 6 ins. from such fence or wall at all. 8 ft. 6 ins. was never used as the criterion. The criterion was that there must be a substantial gangway leading from North Street to the orchard so that the tenant or owner or occupier of the orchard should have easy access thereto to pick the fruit in the summer, to take the hay off it, and so forth. I am quite satisfied that that gangway was always left. On one or it may be two occasions the plaintiff found vehicles not properly stacked, but jutting out so as to obstruct the gangway. She complained once, or possibly twice. It is common ground that when she did complain the vehicles were instantly moved so as to give her this means of ingress and egress.
“The practice established, I find, is this, that for 50 years past the defendant and his predecessor, his father, have been in the habit of storing on the south-east side of the strip vehicles awaiting repair to their woodwork, and that they have been stored on any part on the south-east side of the strip provided that an adequate means of access to Barebones orchard is left, such adequate means being a width of something like 10 ft. Subject to that, the defendant and his predecessors have for the last 50 years used the south-east side of the strip for depositing vehicles awaiting repair, for putting vehicles there which have been repaired and were awaiting collection and for repairing them there themselves. The nature of the vehicles placed on the strip has, of course, changed with changing conditions of life. Lorries and other vehicles of that sort are now placed there and repaired, or while awaiting repair. I am fully...
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