Meter row couple face huge legal bill
COUPLE FACE LEGAL BILL RUNNING INTO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AFTER JUDGES RULE AGAINST THEM IN DISPUTE ABOUT ACCESS TO LAND
A ‘SPITEFUL’ pensioner launched a bitter campaign to stop her neighbour reading her own gas and electricity meters because they were on her land – before stabbing another resident as the bitter row raged on.
Judges told ‘trouble-making’ Carol Dickinson, 76 – and her ‘bombastic’ husband Frank, 82 – they were ‘wrong’ about their legal rights after stopping Mojgan Casillas from accessing her meters.
They were told they never had any right to block Mrs Casillas’s access at her Stockport home.
The couple lost their case in Manchester in 2015, and yesterday lost an appeal in London.
The latest ruling leaves the couple facing hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal bills which they fear will cost them their home.
Mrs Casillas’s lawyers say they are owed ‘well over £200,000’ by the couple – and the debt has been secured against their home of almost 30 years.
The dispute focused on gas and electricity meters which were located in the eight-foot driveway between the homes in Bexhill Road, Davenport.
They are on a wall that can only be accessed from the Dickinsons’ drive.
The retired couple claimed Mrs Casillas had no right to enter their land to inspect or read the meters.
The row has been going on since 2003 and, at Manchester County Court in 2015, Judge Charles Khan ruled Mrs Casillas in the right.
Rejecting the pensioners’ appeal, Lord Justice David Richards said: “Where most neighbours would have found a sensible solution to the problems that arose between them, Mr and Mrs Dickinson took their stand on what they considered to be their strict legal rights.
“To their great cost, they were wrong about those rights”.
The court heard earlier that the Dickinsons erected a locked gate on the path to their home in 2003 and attached to it a cast-iron bar with spikes running across the top, which they described as a ‘decorative feature.’
In his original ruling, Judge Khan said that when Mrs Casillas tried to sell her home in 2006, Mrs Dickinson reportedly tried to cut down a ‘for sale’ sign with ‘some form of carving knife.’ “Another neighbour tried to stop her from doing so,” he said.
“What did Mrs Dickinson, an honest and decent accommodating neighbour, do?
“She stabbed him, for which she was convicted. “That conduct is spiteful. “It is the behaviour of a troublemaker.”
Judge Khan said the couple ‘painted themselves as decent and honest people,’ but said they ‘did not even demonstrate a veneer of values of decency and honesty.’
The pensioners were ordered to either take down the gate, or to give Mrs Casillas a key to it, and she was also given the right to put up guttering on her porch that would overhang her neighbours’ land.
Dismissing the Dickinsons’ appeal, Lord Justice Richards said Judge Khan had been ‘highly critical’ of their behaviour, but they could have no complaints about his decision.
The judge was ‘plainly right’ to find that Mrs Casillas had a right to go on to her neighbours’ land to inspect her meter and any other outcome ‘would be absurd,’ added the appeal judge, who was sitting with Lord Justice Longmore. Outside court during the case, the Dickinsons’ son, Peter, said: “This whole thing has mushroomed into a situation that could result in my parents losing their home.”
This has mushroomed into a situation that could result in them losing their home The couple’s son, Peter