Copeland v Greenhalf

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Copeland v Greenhalf
Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom.svg
Court Chancery Division
Full case nameCopeland v Greenhalf
Decided 07 March 1952
Citation(s) [1952] Ch 488; [1952] 1 All ER 809; [1952] 1 TLR 786; (1952) 96 SJ 261
Keywords
Easements; excessive use

Copeland v Greenhalf [1952] Ch 488 is an English property law case establishing that excessive use of another's land cannot be granted by way of an easement. The defendant claimed that he held a prescriptive right to leave an unlimited number of cars on his neighbour's land, by way of such a right having existed for some fifty years previously. The court found that the claim would amount to the defendant effectively becoming a joint user of the plaintiff's land, and this was not something which could be implied as a right.

English property law refers to the law of acquisition, sharing and protection of valuable assets in England and Wales. While part of the United Kingdom, many elements of Scots property law are different. In England, property law encompasses four main topics:

Contents

Facts

The plaintiff, Mrs Copeland, owned an orchard, and an adjoining house. A strip of land, which measured around 150 feet long by 15 to 35 feet wide, provided access to the orchard from the road. [1] The defendant, a wheelwright, owned a house opposite the strip of land. Mrs Copeland brought an action to prevent the defendant from storing vehicles on her strip of land, following her purchase of the land in 1946. Mr Greenhalf responded that he had a prescriptive right to store vehicles on the strip, as it had been used for such purposes for some fifty years prior to the action. It was submitted that the plaintiff and her predecessors had knowledge of this, with a space left for access to the orchard. [1]

An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive purpose. A fruit garden is generally synonymous with an orchard, although it is set on a smaller non-commercial scale and may emphasize berry shrubs in preference to fruit trees. Most temperate-zone orchards are laid out in a regular grid, with a grazed or mown grass or bare soil base that makes maintenance and fruit gathering easy.

Wheelwright person who builds or repairs wooden wheels

A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the archaic word "wright", which comes from the Old English word "wryhta", meaning a woodworker as in Wheelwright, Shipwright and Arkwright This occupational name eventually became the English surname Wheelwright, akin to Arkwright and Wright, the latter pertaining to all woodworkers, or to metal workers being called Smith.

Judgment

It was submitted for the defendant that the right to deposit objects on the land of another had been recognised, in the case of Pye v Mumford. [2] Whilst Upjohn J accepted that such a right could form an easement, he noted that the right claimed was wholly uncertain and incapable of enforcement by the courts, due to the variable number of vehicles and their indeterminate tenure on the plaintiff's land. [3] Additionally, as an easement must be for the benefit of the dominant tenement, it was submitted that the use of the plaintiff's land to carry out repairs was merely for the benefit of Mr Greenhalf's business, and did not in any way benefit his own land. [3] The main problem the court found however was the breadth of the right that the defendant was seeking, with Upjohn J stating:

I think that the right claimed goes wholly outside any normal idea of an easement, that is, the right of the owner or the occupier of a dominant tenement over a servient tenement. This claim (to which no closely related authority has been referred to me) really amounts to a claim to a joint user of the land by the defendant. [4]

It was therefore held that, as the right was not one which the courts could recognise as an easement, the injunction to prevent the defendant from storing vehicles on the plaintiff's strip of land should be granted.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 [1952] Ch 488, at 488
  2. ↑ Pye v Mumford 116 ER 623
  3. 1 2 [1952] Ch 488, at 497
  4. ↑ [1952] Ch 488, at 498

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References

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