Cases - Blue Town Investments Ltd v Higgs and Hill plc

Record details

Name

Blue Town Investments Ltd v Higgs and Hill plc

Date

(1990)

Citation

1 WLR 696

Keywords

Rights of light

Summary

The plaintiff owned a property with a right of light over the defendant's adjoining land. The defendant was building a block of flats on its land and the plaintiff alleged that the construction would interfere with its rights to light. The parties negotiated and the plaintiff appeared to accept the defendant's proposal to pay compensation for the infringement. Surveyors were instructed and valued the compensation at approximately £7,500. On the basis that the plaintiff was happy for the defendant to continue with the work if it paid compensation, the defendant continued to build. However, six months later the plaintiff claimed an injunction ordering the defendant to pull down the flats or refrain from building them in a way which interfered with its rights to light. The plaintiff did not apply for an interim injunction as it wanted to avoid giving an undertaking in damages, which due to the scale of the project could have been very substantial. This put the defendant in a very difficult position since it had spent huge sums of money on the development and would not know whether it was permitted to build until the trial of the action. The defendant applied to strike out the plaintiff's claim for a final injunction as being vexatious.

The judge held that, although the plaintiff's case was not unarguable, its chances of obtaining an injunction at trial were minimal. The judge decided that, by a letter to the defendant some 7 months before proceedings had started, the plaintiff had elected to seek compensation instead of requiring the development to be altered. Thereafter, he found that the plaintiff had stood by, without protest, while the defendant proceeded with the work. He considered that it would be very difficult for the plaintiff to establish at trial that it had not acquiesced in the development. Standing by and watching a party proceeding on the basis that rights would not be enforced was, in his view, the sort of conduct that disentitled a plaintiff from claiming an injunction. He therefore decided that the claim should be struck out unless the plaintiff was prepared to apply for an interim injunction and to give an undertaking in damages.