Legal Issues & Human Rights



Legal Issues & Human Rights

Introduction

Boundary disputes are an unfortunate fact of life. This paper illustrates the difficulties faced in England and Wales by many owners and corporations because of adverse possession of boundary land and it also discusses alternative remedies, which may be relied upon to resolve boundary disputes. Many cases have been seen in England and Wales where the squatter hold the land, but he is fully aware that he is not the owner of the land and does not hold the right to acquire the land.

Part A

Case 1

The law in the United Kingdom allows the squatter the right to adversely possess a land where he has been living for 12 or more than 12 years, without any liability to compensation. However, it was not an interruption into the applicant companies' rights to the ownership of their property.

There were two companies of UK that were the applicants, J. A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd and J. A. Pye (Oxford) Land Ltd. J. A. Pye Land ltd. claimed to be the owner of the land of 23 hectares. However, the other party was the former owner of the land.

Another party, that was the owner of the land adjacent to the land of two companies, Michael John Graham and Caroline Grahams, occupied the land under an agreement in 1983. However, after the expiration of the agreement, the Grahams did not agree to vacant land and continued to use the property without any legal agreement.

The applicants of the first case were two companies based in United Kingdom. The names of the companies were J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd and J.A. Pye (Oxford) Land Ltd. The applicants claimed to be the registered owners of the agricultural land, but the title of ownership was lost in the English courts by a successful claim of adverse possession by the personal representative of Grahams, who claimed to be the owners of the land belonging to JA Pye (Oxford) Ltd.

In the era of Post-Human Rights, it was inevitable that the claim will arise as to whether such automatic and arbitrary separation of the owner's title was contrary to the Article 1 of the European Convention. The case was said to be decided in J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd v United Kingdom, where the European Court of Human Rights claimed that automatic separation after the period of twelve years of possession was a violation of Article 1, Protocol 1. The decision of the Court had questioned some of the principles of English land law.

The Decision of the European Court

At first, court held that Grahams have a successful possession of the land of Pye because of Pye's expiration of the license agreement. However, later on, the court reversed this finding, and held that the land belongs to its owners and there is no successful adverse possession could be found because the Grahams had not dispossessed Pye from the land.

The Decision of the European Court of Human Rights

The court addressed the issue that whether the law ...