The pot plant war
Neighbour hit by £30,000 legal bill for blocking drive
A PENSIONER faces a £ 30,000 court bill after blocking a driveway with pot plants during a ten-year feud with her neighbour.
Retired taxi driver Yvonne Rogers was sued by grandmother Janice Wright after placing the plants on her side of the shared path.
The properties are accessed by a single driveway, with both women owning half its width but claiming right of way along it all. Mrs Wright complained that the overgrown shrubbery made it hard for her even to push her grandchild’s buggy to her house in Portchester, Hampshire.
And now the conflict appears to have ended in defeat for Miss Rogers, 72, who faces a £30,000 bill in legal costs as well as a suspended jail term after ignoring a court order to remove potted plants.
The Court of Appeal heard how Mrs Wright complained that her neighbour had begun obstructing the drive from about 2012 by leaving plant pots on her side. She also placed wheelie bins and garb den ornaments along it and allowed trees and plants to overhang the drive.
Exasperated after years of friction, Mrs Wright took her neigh our to Winchester County Court last year and Miss Rogers was ordered to clear the obstruction.
But she failed to do so and was hauled back to court in June this year when she was found in contempt by Judge Michael Berkley.
Her response had been to not turn up and send a string of emails, seeking to ‘ threaten, demean and accuse’ those involved, he said. She insisted the case was ‘not about flower pots’, suggesting she was a victim of religious discrimination.
‘The conduct which the defendant has chosen to engage with this matter has been conduct which has brought severe distress, worry, fear and expense to Mrs Wright,’ the judge said.
In September, he sentenced Miss Rogers to six months’ jail for ignoring the injunction. But appealing to have the sentence overturned last week, her barrister John King said she removed the pots after June’s hearing and would cut back the bushes.
Lord Justice Stuart-Smith suspended Miss Rogers’ sentence so that she does not go to jail.
‘Religious discrimination’