Nata Lee Ltd v Abid & Anor
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE BRIGGS
Areas of Law
- Property and Real Estate Law
- Tort Law
- Contract Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
This case involved an appeal by Nata Lee Limited against an order by the Central London County Court in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Abid concerning trespass and interference with a right of way. The dispute centered on boundary issues following Nata Lee's redevelopment works. The Court of Appeal, presided by Lord Justice Briggs, found errors in the initial judgment and ordered a retrial on specific points, while allowing parts of the appeal and dismissing others.
Judgment
Lord Justice Briggs :
Introduction
This is an appeal against the Order of District Judge Langley made in the Central London County Court on 5 th November 2013, in which she made detailed declarations after a liability-only trial of a claim by the respondents, Mr. and Mrs. Abid, against the defendant, Nata Lee Limited, for trespass and interference with a right of way. After a three-day trial the judge found for the claimants broadly on all the heads of their claim, and gave case management directions for the necessary further hearing as to remedies.
Nata Lee appeals against all the declarations made, seeking for the most part determinations in its favour, but in the alternative a re-trial.
As Mr. Tom Weekes, counsel for Nata Lee, very properly emphasised at the beginning of his submissions, this was a trial which presented the learned District Judge with very real difficulties. The case raised a confusing mass of issues. There was no proper trial bundle, but a mass of documents, presented non-chronologically. There was a stark inequality of arms between the parties. The claimants were represented by leading and junior counsel, whereas the defendant appeared via one of its directors, in an essentially chancery case in which legal complexity makes effective self-representation even harder than it usually is. As will appear, I have concluded that many of the appellant’s criticisms of the fact-finding and legal analysis in the judge’s promptly-delivered reserved judgment are well-founded. Nonetheless, my detailed conclusions about the shortcomings in the judgment do not diminish my appreciation of the difficulties which the judge had to surmount. It was a case which a County Court judge, and even a High Court judge, would have found challenging.
The dispute arose from the re-development, in 2007-08, of former warehouse premises in Clarence Road, London, E5, which Nata Lee acquired in late 2005. Those premises, now known as 99-103 Clarence Road (but previously 99-105), lie on the west side of Clarence Road. The claimants own the adjoining property to the north, known as 105-107 Clarence Road, having acquired it in April 1995. The claimants have, throughout their ownership of it, run a printing business from their property.
Nata Lee’s redevelopment consisted of the demolition of the former warehouse and its replacement with a mixture of offices and apartments on, substantially, the same footprint as the warehouse. Between the warehouse (now the n