The Supreme Court has reduced to £10,000 the compensation payable to Persian Properties Limited after a Land Registry mapping error left the company without ownership of a small strip of land beside what is now Dublin’s Davenport Hotel.
In a judgment delivered on 20 February 2003, Chief Justice Keane said the strip measured 116 square feet and occupied a key position at the entrance to a lane between the hotel and the rear of No. 1 Merrion Square. The court allowed an appeal by the Registrar of Titles and the Minister for Finance, replacing a High Court order that had awarded the developers compensation for the land and certain legal costs.
The disputed strip had been included in the Commissioners for Public Works’ title documents, but the Land Registry’s mapping when the property was first registered in 1976 removed a narrow bottleneck from the lane. The developers later bought the registered land as part of plans to convert Merrion Hall into a hotel. Tomkin Estates Limited, which claimed title to the strip under a lease, successfully sued the developers and obtained a declaration of ownership from the High Court. An appeal in that case was withdrawn.
The Supreme Court rejected arguments that the developers’ conduct, the original registration application’s mapping error or the statutory qualification that registered maps do not conclusively establish boundaries defeated their compensation claim. It held that the Registry’s error was substantial in context, despite affecting only a small proportion of the registered area, and that the developers had suffered loss through no fault of their own.
However, the court ruled that the developers could not recover the costs of defending Tomkin’s ownership claim. Their solicitor had learned of the mapping error months before the proceedings began, but the developers did not tell the Registrar they intended to contest the claim. The court said whether litigation costs can be compensated depends on the circumstances of each case, and found it unjust to make the public defendants bear these costs without having been given an opportunity to say whether the litigation was necessary.
The Supreme Court therefore substituted an award of £10,000, the value it accepted for the strip. It did not award the developers the costs of the earlier High Court litigation.