This April Fool’s Day, Estates Gazette celebrates some of the oddest and most surprising property cases in legal history – ones which likely had the judges hearing them checking the date on their calendars.
Writing for the Practice & Law section of this week’s magazine, author James Wilson surveyed his legal tomes and selected suitably fanciful, frivolous and downright foolish disputes.
In his words: “These range from cases that made for crucial legal rulings to those which did nothing more than resolve bickering between petty minded neighbours, but entertained onlookers all the same.”
His choices range from a quirky conflict over covenants protecting London’s Leicester Square as a public open space, to the interpretation of a promise made in a small community where the farmers of the area were “not given to direct speaking”, and local parlance fell to be interpreted by the judge.
Wilson also reviews a number of daft disputes between neighbours that had exasperated judges tearing out their wig hair over the amounts of money being spent to resolve minor issues of little real value.
Extending his review to the courts in Canada, he even presents “perhaps the best example of a judicial dressing-down of spoilt suburban malcontents”, including an extensive extract from a 2014 decision filled with damning prose from Justice EM Morgan.
• Click here to read the full foray into foolishness.
• To send feedback, e-mail jess.harrold@estatesgazette.com or tweet @jessharrold or @estatesgazette
