Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels, and trespass to land.
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance. Breach occurs when a party to a contract fails to fulfill its obligation(s), whether partially or wholly, as described in the contract, or communicates an intent to fail the obligation or otherwise appears not to be able to perform its obligation under the contract. Where there is breach of contract, the resulting damages have to be paid to the aggrieved party by the party breaching the contract.
English contract law is the body of law that regulates legally binding agreements in England and Wales. With its roots in the lex mercatoria and the activism of the judiciary during the Industrial Revolution, it shares a heritage with countries across the Commonwealth, from membership in the European Union, continuing membership in Unidroit, and to a lesser extent the United States. Any agreement that is enforceable in court is a contract. A contract is a voluntary obligation, contrasting to the duty to not violate others rights in tort or unjust enrichment. English law places a high value on ensuring people have truly consented to the deals that bind them in court, so long as they comply with statutory and human rights.
Re Ellenborough Park[1955] EWCA Civ 4 was an English land law case which reformulated the tests for an easement. It found an easement to use a communal garden to be a valid easement in law. There is no requirement for all of the houses to be immediately next to the garden to benefit from it.
An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a property right and type of incorporeal property in itself at common law in most jurisdictions.
British Leyland Motor Corp. v Armstrong Patents Co. is a 1986 decision of the House of Lords concerning the doctrine of non-derogation from grants. This doctrine is comparable to, but somewhat broader than, the doctrine of legal estoppel, assignor estoppel, or estoppel by deed in U.S. law. Under the doctrine of non-derogation from grants, a seller of realty or goods is not permitted to take any action that would lessen the value to the buyer of the thing sold.
Crabb v Arun District Council [1975] EWCA Civ 7 is a leading English land law and contract case concerning "proprietary estoppel". Lord Denning MR affirmed that where agreements concern the acquisition of rights over land, there is no need for both parties to provide a consideration for upholding the bargain. While promissory estoppel cannot found a cause of action it was held that in the peculiar situation of land, consideration is not necessary at all.
Moncrieff v Jamieson [2007] UKHL 42 is a Scottish property law case decided by the House of Lords on servitudes.
Greene v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2004] EWCA Civ 1462 is a case of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales that governs the use of injunctions against publication in alleged defamation cases. Greene, a businesswoman, sought an injunction against Associated Newspapers Ltd to prevent them publishing alleged links with Peter Foster; while they claimed to have emails showing links, she asserted that they were false. The test at the time for a preliminary injunction in defamation cases was Bonnard v Perryman, where it was established that the applicant has to show "a real prospect of success" at trial. The Human Rights Act 1998 established that judges should consider whether applicants are "more likely than not" to succeed at trial, a test applied to confidentiality cases in Cream Holdings Ltd v Banerjee and the Liverpool Post and Echo Ltd. Greene claimed that the Cream test should be applied rather than the Bonnard test.
Wheeler v JJ Saunders Ltd [1994] EWCA Civ 32 is an English Court of Appeal case on nuisance which amended the precedent set by Gillingham Borough Council v Medway (Chatham) Dock Co Ltd. Wheeler was a veterinary surgeon who owned Kingdown Farm House; the wider farm was owned by J.J. Saunders Ltd, who used it for raising pigs. After Saunders gained planning permission for a pair of pig houses, Wheeler brought an action in nuisance, alleging that the smell of the pigs interfered with his use and enjoyment of the land. When the case went to the Court of Appeal, Saunders argued that the granting of planning permission for the pig houses had changed the nature of the area, as in Gillingham, making the nuisance permissible. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument, holding that a pair of pig houses was not a sufficient development to change the nature of an area; the centre of the Gillingham case had been a commercial dock, which was a sufficient development.
Easements in English law are certain rights in English land law that a person has over another's land. Rights recognised as easements range from very widespread forms of rights of way, most rights to use service conduits such as telecommunications cables, power supply lines, supply pipes and drains, rights to use communal gardens and rights of light to more strained and novel forms. All types are subject to general rules and constraints. As one of the formalities in English law express, express legal easements must be created by deed.
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.
An employment contract in English law is a specific kind of contract whereby one person performs work under the direction of another. The two main features of a contract is that work is exchanged for a wage, and that one party stands in a relationship of relative dependence, or inequality of bargaining power. On this basis, statute, and to some extent the common law, requires that compulsory rights are enforceable against the employer.
English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the feudal system established by William the Conqueror after 1066, but is now mostly registered and sold on the real estate market. The modern law's sources derive from the old courts of common law and equity, and legislation such as the Law of Property Act 1925, the Settled Land Act 1925, the Land Charges Act 1972, the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 and the Land Registration Act 2002. At its core, English land law involves the acquisition, content and priority of rights and obligations among people with interests in land. Having a property right in land, as opposed to a contractual or some other personal right, matters because it creates priority over other people's claims, particularly if the land is sold on, the possessor goes insolvent, or when claiming various remedies, like specific performance, in court.
Kling v Keston Properties Ltd (1985) is an English land law case, concerning actual occupation in registered land, specifically domestic garages.
London and Blenheim Estates Ltd v Ladbroke Retail Parks Ltd [1993] 4 All ER 157 is an English land law case, concerning easements. It persuasively confirmed for one of the first times, obiter, that parking a car on land on its own could be the appropriate subject matter for an express easement. It established that an arrangement for a future extension of easement rights over specific other land would require a specific parcel of dominant land too. Simply agreeing that wherever any dominant land is extended the easement on the servient land will be extended is insufficient.
Kent v Kavanagh[2006] EWCA Civ 162 is an English land law case, concerning easements. It concerns physically shared amenities with physically divided ownership as to the land or surface on which they rest.
Green v Lord Somerleyton is an English land law and tort law case, concerning easements of surface water/ditch drainage and the tests for nuisance in English law. In this case there was no remedy for the flooding found to be natural and not recently exacerbated by the defendant. The court attached to the properties an old, 1921, easement of drainage passing both land holdings, in this case two common examples of lowland water engineering, dykes controlled against tides by one-way valves, mentioned in the properties' deeds and, duplicatively, established the right by prescription. The dykes lay in the claimant's own land who had failed to maintain them and failed to account for the flows caused by reduction of water extraction from the lake upstream. The claimant had failed to repair the pump and clear ditches on his own land which had been agreed between the previous owners to give channelled drainage from a lake above. It was for the claimant to recognise the danger posed by its waterline being raised in 1954 by the building up of a weir.
Crow v Wood[1970] EWCA Civ 5 is an English land law case, confirming an easement commonly exists for the right to have a fence or wall kept in repair expressed in earlier deeds, which is a right which is capable of being "granted" by law and secondly, as a separate but on the facts, related issue, of the right of common land pasture asserted by continued use.
Sir Geoffrey Charles Vos is a judge in England and Wales. Since January 2021, he has held the positions of Master of the Rolls and the Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales.
