Use of plot for 12 years — Protest on behalf of paper title owner — Whether owner discontinued possession or was dispossessed — Whether claimants in adverse possession for 12 years — Claim dismissed
In 1974 the appellants purchased 6 Broadmoor Road, Corfe Mullen, Dorset, from the respondent’s mother, Mrs Dummett. Adjoining the property, and without any visible physical boundary, there was a vacant and overgrown plot also owned by Mrs Dummett; this plot was not included in the conveyance. From 1974 the appellants used the plot as part of their garden; they tended the grass, placed a chicken run on the plot and from time to time parked cars on it. Although Mrs Dummett did not visit the plot between 1974 and her death in 1985, her son-in-law, the respondent’s husband, visited it in 1975 and informed the appellants that the greenhouse on the plot should not be used. They complied with this request.
In 1987, after the respondent had inherited the plot, she obtained outline planning permission for its development and on September 18 1987 she commenced proceedings for possession. In Poole County Court, Her Honour Judge McKinney (May 16 1988) dismissed the appellants’ claim that as they had been in adverse possession 12 years prior to the action, the proceedings for possession were time-barred by section 15 of the Limitation Act 1980. She decided that the respondent had not been dispossessed nor had discontinued possession and that the appellants had not established adverse possession for the purposes of para 8(1) of Schedule 1 to the 1980 Act.
Held The appeal was dismissed. The fact that the paper title owner had retained the title to the plot and had not included it in the 1974 conveyance was not relevant. But the county court judge had been entitled to draw certain conclusions from the facts: the 1975 visit of Mr Morrice, as the then paper title owner’s agent, requesting a use to cease, a request that was acceded to, indicated that on September 18 1975 the paper title owner did not intend to discontinue possession. The 1975 visit was not decisive, but inferences could be drawn from it.
The facts showed that the appellants did not have the necessary animus possidendi to establish that they had been in adverse possession on September 18 1975; adverse possession must amount to an intention to exclude the owner and all others and there was no evidence of this.
Buckinghamshire County Council v Moran
[1989] EGCS 21 followed.
John Aspinall (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard, for Insley & Partners, of Bournemouth) appeared for the appellants; and Michael Norman (instructed by J W Miller & Sons, of Poole) appeared for the respondent.
