[2025] EWHC 1955 (KB)

The Judge was wrong to ignore the direct testimony of the respondent’s witness statement.

This ground is elaborated at paragraphs 15 and 16 of the Written Submissions. These assert that the Court was wrong to ignore the Respondent’s witness statement that ‘respondent as trespassing by jumping over the walls to access appellants pathway and building but finding instead that easement was established…’ and that it was a serious miscarriage of justice for the Court to deny, and record that ‘There was no forced entry through a locked gate’ where the Club Trustee confess to jumping over the Appellant’s walls’.

The submission is entirely circular. It has as its premise that the Contested Land is owned by Mr Askan and that the Club had no easement over the Path. Were that to be the case, accessing the Contested Land over Mr Askan’s wall would have been a trespass. Other than that, the fact of access via the climbing over the wall from 2019 onwards (as the Judge found the date to be) is wholly irrelevant, analytically, to the question of ownership, through paper title or adverse possession of the Contested Land or the acquisition of an easement in the period prior to 2019. If, contrary to Mr Askan’s false premise, the Contested Land belonged, by title and/or adverse possession, to the Club, and the Club had an easement over the Path, the actions admitted to by Mr Hunter were entirely lawful.

This ground is not remotely arguable.