Easy Easements

Easy Easements - Part 1

This two-part series is about four important cases that have been decided over the past year relating to the acquisition of easements. This Part 1 highlights two cases which explain key principles that can dictate whether or not an easement exists.

Part 2 will highlight two cases that provide guidance on how to obtain (or avoid a neighbour obtaining) easements by prescription, which can result from the continued exercise, by an occupier of land, of a right over neighbouring land for twenty consecutive years.

Le Cuona v Big Apple Marketing Limited [2017] Chancery Division

As a preliminary point, this case provides a helpful reminder that a fork is a fork even if the manufacturer insists that it is a spade - which is a crude paraphrasing of part of Lord Templeman's famous judgment in the 1985 case of Street v Mountford.

Street v Mountford was a case about a Mr Street who granted Mrs Mountford a right to occupy two rooms in his building. Mr Street thought that if he referred to the right to occupy in the document as a "licence" - as opposed to a "tenancy" - and to the sum that Mrs Mountford owed as a "licence fee" - as opposed to "rent" - this would prevent the document from being considered in law to be a "tenancy" and he would therefore not be required to comply with legislation that...