The High Court has rejected all claims brought by a couple in a decade-long dispute with their neighbours over a hedge and laneway near the coast south of Arklow, Co Wicklow.
In a judgment delivered on 12 December 2014, Kearns P. found that the defendants owned the laneway and the hedge along its western side. He granted a declaration on their counterclaim confirming their exclusive ownership and possession or occupation of the laneway, hedge and land beneath it, but said that ownership did not extend beyond the ditch on the plaintiffs’ side of the hedge.
The plaintiffs retained the right to cut and trim their side of the hedge where it extended beyond the ditch into their garden. The court found they had not established any right over the laneway, including a claimed right of way to trim the hedge from the laneway side.
The ownership dispute turned in part on historical maps and land records. The court accepted that the laneway formed part of a 34-acre holding bought under an Irish Land Commission sale agreement in 1904. It found a map attached to a 1938 deed conveying the plaintiffs’ land was schematic and unreliable as a guide to the lane’s width, ownership or the hedge’s ownership.
The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claims that the defendants had significantly widened the mouth of the lane or caused the main damage to the hedge. It found any widening at the entrance was on the eastern side, on a neighbouring landowner’s property. The lane had been widened further back towards a bridge over the years, but the judge said that was a matter for the defendants.
The plaintiffs alleged that hedge cutting and a March 2005 incident, when a defendant used a tractor to move soil from the lane entrance, damaged the hedge and reduced their privacy. The judge noted that a photograph taken in February 2005 already showed the gap said to have resulted from the March incident. On the balance of probabilities, he found the soil removal did not cause the damage at that point. He said the defendants may at worst have cut the lane-side hedge too enthusiastically over a number of years to make room for mobile homes.
The judgment followed a Circuit Court case and appeal that each took about seven days of court time. The High Court heard evidence from the parties, lay witnesses and several experts, including a surveyor and an arborist.