Neighbour versus neighbour in war of the hedgerow

Good fences make good neighbours, Robert Frost famously wrote. A Halifax woman has learned the hard way that a perfectly good hedge also does the trick.

In fact, Sarah Harris must give Tanya Isaacs, her nextdoor neighbour in a “leafy neighbourhood of west end Halifax,” $6,167.35 after Harris and her husband “took up a chainsaw and levelled about twenty-five feet or more of the hedge” separating their backyards, Nova Scotia Small Claims Court adjudicator Eric Slone has ruled.

Isaacs “looked out her window on the morning after and saw for the first time the empty space where the hedge had always been. This came as a complete shock to her,” Slone wrote. “Clearly, the act of removing the hedge without so much as a 'by your leave’ was not a neighbourly thing to do. The question for this court is whether it was also unlawful.”

The two had been neighbours for about nine years, but the hedge — “barberry bushes as well as a scattering of small interspersed maple trees” — had been there at least 40 years — until that first weekend of May 2018. No one knew who planted it or — more to the point — exactly where.

Slone noted that a property line is, by definition, a line, while “of course, the hedge (as it existed) was a three-dimensional object occupying airspace and sending roots into the ground on both properties,” the judgment said.

CLEARLY, THE ACT OF REMOVING THE HEDGE ... WAS NOT A NEIGHBOURLY THING TO DO.

Harris and Isaacs both spent thousands on surveyors, and the lines they produced were virtually identical, with the hedge jogging “along a slightly crooked path.”

To back his reasoning, Slone cited cases as recent as 2013, and one as ancient as 1698.

Harris’s plan — later carried out — was to replace the hedge with a wooden fence. According to Slone’s judgment, "(Isaacs) was clear in her testimony that her main concern was not having been consulted, and she admitted that she might well have consented had she known in advance that (Harris) was planning to build a privacy fence. The end result is that privacy has been restored. The fence is a nice one … "

Slone summed up his decision this way: “Based on the whereabouts of all of the stems, it was a jointly owned hedge that the Defendant (Harris) did not have the unilateral right to destroy. Her actions therefore constituted trespass.”

Most of the judgment against Harris — $5,313 — covered the cost of the surveyor Isaacs hired.