Sarah Douglas, who runs an estate agency, is facing legal costs topping £200,000 (over $264,800 at current exchange rates) after a long-running argument over a hedge between seaside homes in Torquay, England, ended against her.
Judge Paul Mitchell called the matter a "tragedy," and the case turned on an almost vanishingly small slice of land. In the end, the dispute was reduced to the position of the hedge stems and differences measured in fractions of an inch.
Here's what to know
Douglas said the dispute began after the hedge dividing the properties was removed in 2018. According to The Independent, the 57-year-old had moved into the £700,000 (about $926,900) hilltop home in 2017 and argued that the land where the hedge had stood belonged to her.
By the time Ronald Channon bought the neighboring home for £1.4 million ($1.85 million) in June 2021, the hedge had been removed by the former neighbor, but the disagreement was still ongoing.
The former rally driver, who later became an insurance boss, installed a fence that Douglas said was on her land because she felt the boundary reached to the hedge's "southernmost leaf." Channon argued that the boundary followed the hedge's stems, which would put the fence on his land.
Judge Mitchell said a boundary tied to the hedge's outer growth would shift as the hedge thickened, so after a trial in Plymouth County Court, he ruled in Channon's favor.
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Douglas now owes an upfront payment of £108,402 ($143,540), though the final amount has yet to be assessed. That followed her unsuccessful High Court appeal of both the boundary decision and the legal costs order.
More background
Judge Mitchell noted that both properties have "fabulous sea views." The homes sit on Mead Road near the top of a hill in Torquay, with Douglas' property on the higher, northern side of Channon's.
Douglas also argued that the original hedge helped support the stepped bank between the homes. The court heard claims that removing it amounted to trespass or nuisance and may have weakened the bank, though the central issue remained the precise location of the boundary line.
Channon responded with a counterclaim seeking £200,000 for an alleged drop in his property's value, along with harassment and nuisance claims tied to Douglas' dogs and weeds. The court dismissed that counterclaim, but Justice Linden said Judge Mitchell was entitled to conclude that Channon had prevailed on the main issue.
Mitchell ruled that "where the boundary separating two properties is demarcated by a hedge which belongs within the curtilage of one of the properties, the boundary will run along the outer edge of the growers or trunks or stems," rather than the furthest reach of leaves or branches.
That left Douglas arguing on appeal that the county court had improperly taken a wafer-thin strip of her garden by approving a boundary line that ran through the former stem area. However, Justice Linden said the difference was so slight as to be effectively negligible.
"He read, saw, and heard all of the evidence and, indeed, undertook a site visit," Linden wrote of the trial judge, adding that the stems were thin enough that the discrepancy was "a matter of mere millimetres." He also said it would not be justified to drag the case out any further given that "the costs of the litigation were already very substantial."
Mitchell summarized the case, saying, "This is a wholly unfortunate dispute which, from any objective viewpoint, should plainly not have got to this point … clearly it has caused a significant amount of stress and upset, let alone cost." He added, "Each case of this sort is, in its own way, a tragedy."
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