An urban development planner based in Milton Keynes has, for the second time, lost a dispute with the Commission for New Towns in respect of boundary lines at his private residence.
After 26 years of wrangling, the High Court has rejected a bid by Dr James Buxton to demolish four houses on a site adjoining his Bradville home on the ground that the boundaries had been wrongly redrawn after he purchased the property.
Nelson J said that the action amounted to an attempt by Buxton to re-litigate a dispute that the High Court had dismissed in 1994.
Striking out the claim, he agreed with the commission that Buxton had “exhausted all avenues of appeal”, to the extent that he had unsuccessfully petitioned both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords after the 1994 ruling.
“This application involves the same points that were made or might have been made in [1994],” he said. “The repeated re-litigation of the same issues before the court, because the litigant cannot accept the decision of the court, amounts to an abuse of process.”
Buxton first sued the commission’s predecessor, Milton Keynes Development Corporation, in 1980, after it allegedly redrew boundaries surrounding Stanton High Cottage, which he had purchased from the corporation four years earlier, in order to prepare two adjoining sites for sale.
When the dispute was finally heard in 1994, Judge Connor ruled that the boundaries were those shown on a plan drawn by the commission’s land surveyor, rather than those designated by fences and walls that Buxton had erected.
He ordered Buxton to move his fences accordingly.
This week, Nelson J rejected Buxton’s arguments that the judgment had been “obtained by fraud or collusion by the commission and its employees”.
He said: “The judge considered his evidence and rejected it. He preferred the evidence of the commission’s surveyor. There is no proper basis upon which Dr Buxton can now reassert that this judgment was obtained by fraud, nor has he produced fresh evidence to claim that is so.
“I therefore conclude that the declaration as to boundaries made by Judge Connor is binding.”
Planning consent for the erection of 12 houses on the sites adjoining Buxton’s land was granted to Bedfordshire Pilgrims Housing Association in December 2004.
Buxton v MJ Hillson Ltd and another Queen’s Bench Division (Nelson J) 20 February 2006.
The claimant appeared in person; Lawrence Jacobson (instructed by Phillip Kaye & Co) appeared for the second defendant; the first defendant did not appear and was not represented.
References: EGi Legal News 24/02/06
