Court battle strips green-fingered Jurat of garden land

Friday 15 September 2017

A Jersey jurat did his neighbour’s gardening for nearly 25 years before being told by a judge last week that he didn’t actually own the land.

Jurat Mike Liston OBE learned in the Royal Court last week that he could not claim title to an area of garden, after the court decided that it really belonged to his neighbour.

Jersey Electricity – a company that Mr Liston led until 2008 – bought a Trinity property for Mr Liston and his wife in the early 1990s because they did not have the residential status to do so at the time. 

Having paid back the JEC in 1996, the Listons moved in and took to clearing a strip of land at the end of their garden that had become extremely overgrown because it would have “offended their sense of tidiness.”

Soon after, they planted three fruit trees – a pear, a plum and an apple – and a hydrangea plant which was a gift from Mr Liston’s wife’s late father.

Their neighbour, however, said that she had always owned the land, but had just chosen never to cultivate it because she had been too preoccupied running her own business. When the Listons began gardening, “she regarded it as a pleasant gesture” intended to encourage birds and wildlife. 

But years later, having enjoyed a cordial relationship, things began to sour between the neighbours. After having finished with her business, by 2015 the neighbour wrote to her conveyancer that she would like to take back that land despite remaining silent for more than a decade about the Liston’s fruit-growing – and would start by planting a hedge.

 A letter with an apparently annoyed tone from the conveyancer sparked a meeting between Mr Liston and his neighbour, which he then proceeded to record without her knowledge.

Pictured: The case was heard in the Royal Court in front of Commissioner McMahon and Jurats Bartie and Le Pelley.

That meeting led to an awkward exchange in which the neighbour told Mr Liston: “…I wouldn’t want the fruit so if we do divide it up you are welcome to the fruit anyway but I mean I just thought you use it you keep it you know you maintain it and that was always my understanding really… I wouldn’t expect someone to maintain my garden unless they had some use of it you know. [sic]” 

“Yeah and we wouldn’t have been doing anything on anyone’s garden if it wasn’t ours [sic],” he replied.

Following petitions that the neighbour’s hedge proposal would have a “devastating impact” on them, the Listons suggested that they buy the land to help maintain the status quo, but their neighbour was unwilling to sell at any price and refused to discuss matters further.

While this approach aggrieved the Listons after their years of hard work, the Court found in favour of their neighbour.

Commissioner RJ McMahon, who sat with Jurats Bartie and Le Pelley, decided that the green-fingered pair could not rely on the neighbour’s silence or inactivity as tacit acknowledgement of their rightful ownership.

He did, however, make one concession, suggesting that they should be allowed to take back the plants placed there due to their “understandable sentimental attachment.” 

“Apart from having cleared the land and mown it for years, this planting, especially the shrub to which the Second Defendant has understandable sentimental attachment, are the only improvements made and we do not think that they should be regarded now as the Plaintiff’s, in the sense of running with the land, unless the Defendants indicate that they do not wish to take any of them,” Commissioner McMahon concluded.