Ough v King
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE DANCKWERTS |
| Judgment Date | 06 October 1967 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1967] EWCA Civ J1006-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 06 October 1967 |
[1967] EWCA Civ J1006-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
Civil Division
From His Honour Judge Glazebrook Gravesend County Court.
The Master of the Rolls
(Lord Denning)
Lord Justice Danckwerts and
Lord Justice Diplock
MR J. FINLAY (instructed br Messrs Tolhursts, Agents for Messrs Tolhurst & Hiscok, Gravesend) appeared as Counsel for the Appellant.
MR ROBIN MILLER (instructed by Mr Arthur Goldberg) appeared as Counsel for the Respondent.
THE MASTER OF SHE ROLLS: We need not trouble you, Mr Miller.
In Gravesend there are two houses called Nos.100 and 102 Damley Road, Shey are detaohed from one another and there is a passage about 6 ft. vide between them. They hare been there cany years, So long indeed that each is entitled to "ancient lights", that is, the right to light oyer the property of the other.
Mrs Ough bought No,102 Damley Road in 1958. There she lived with her family and did her work. She was a Minister in the United Fundamentalist Church and sent out Church literature all over the world. She used a room on the ground floor for her work. Voluntary workers came in to help her. The next-door house, No,100 Damley Road, was bought by Mr King in 1963. Mr King is a builder. He decided to convert his house. No. 100 Damley Road, into self-oontained flats. When Mrs Ough got to hear of it, letters were written about the light, but no agreement was reached. Eventually Mr King went on with his conversion work. He did so at his own risk, in peril that if he infringed Mrs Ough's right to light he would be held liable.
Mr King converted his property into flats. On the ground floor he put out a kitchen at the back in place of a greenhouse, and on the first floor he extended the building out towards the back so as to make a bathroom. These additions diminished the volume of light coming to Mrs Ough's ground floor room where she worked.
Thereupon she brought an action for an injunction and damages in respect of the Infringement of her right to light. The Judge did not grant the injunction but he held that she was entitled to substantial damages in lieu of an injunction and awarded her £500. Now Mr King appeals. He acknowledges that Mrs Ough has a right to light but denies that he has infringed it.
The nature of a right to light was considered in theleading case of Colls v. Home & Colonial Stores. 1904 Appeal Oases, page 179. It is not every diminution of light which gives an action. It is only when it is so dominished as to he a nuisance. It means that Mr King was not allowed to build next door in suoh a way as to deprive Mrs Ough of the light coming to her room so as to make it uncomfortable according to the ordinary notions of mankind. Now Mr King says here that there was not a diminution in light suoh as to amount to. a nuisance. He called a most eminent expert in this field, Mr Anstey, a chartered surveyor, who, together with Mr Chavasse, a barrister, has written a book upon the subject. Mr Anstey has had great experience in many cases. He made calculations according to the methods worked out by Mr Waldram in the 1920's. Mr Anstey said there had been some diminution in light to the downstairs room, but not such as to be a nuisance. He said that the area of this room was 156½ feet. Before the work next door, there was an area adequately lit amounting to 1OO¼ square feet. Since the work, the area adequately lit had only been reduced to 80¼ square feet. So it had only been reduced by one-fifth. More than half of it (80¼ — out of 156¼) was adequately lit; and so long as half was adequately lit, there was no infringement. He applied Mr Waldram's test and pointed out that it was accepted by Mr Justice Upjohn in 1954 in the unreported case of William Cory & Sons Limited. v. City of London Seal Property Co., which is printed in a supplement to Mr Anstey's bock. According to that test, if one half of the room is adequately lit, that is satisfactory, at any rate for a room in the City of London for office use.
The Judge heard the evidence of the plaintiff's surveyor to the contrarys who said that the diminution of light to this room was suoh as to make it uncomfortable for ordinary use. In addition, the Judge went and viewed the room himself at 2 o'olock on a February afternoon. He said it was rather better than he expected. I may say in parenthesis that Ithink it is very helpful for a Judge in light eases to have a...
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Allen v Greenwood
...at 725, where the test was stated to be "All ordinary purposes of inhabitancy or business", and to the test applied by this court in Cugh v. King, (1967) 1 Weekly Law Reports, 1547, "Ordinary notions of contemporary mankind". These, however, I think, are at best neutral and possibly tell t......
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Decision Nº ACQ 452 2009. Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), 06-10-2015
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Regan v Paul Properties Ltd and Others
...that he may be able to go on having his lunch without the use of electric light in places where obviously he had so lunched." 59 In Ough v.King [1967] 1 WLR 1547, the defendant relied on Waldram diagrams to demonstrate that the extensions he had constructed did not reduce the amount of ade......
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...Ltd [1904] AC 179. 41 Carr-Saunders v Dick McNeil Associates Ltd [1986] 1 WLR 922; Moore v Hall (1878) 3 QBD 178 at 182. 42 Ough v King [1967] 1 WLR 1547; Deakins v Hookings [1994] 14 EG 133, where even though the dominant owner had failed to obtain an interlocutory injunction, the court st......