£27,000 court bill for ‘neighbour from hell’ who cut down hedge
A GARDENING enthusiast has been handed a £27,000 court bill and labelled a “neighbour from hell” after being sued for hacking down next-door’s holly hedge.
Tersia Van Zyl and husband Stiaan were dragged to court after neighbour Peter WalkerSmith accused them of having the hedge that separated their gardens chopped down in April 2019 and replaced with a fence.
Mrs Van Zyl got contractors to chop the spiky hedge down to make her flower bed bigger, Central London County Court heard.
Dispute
But Mr Walker-Smith, 39, sued the couple, claiming they had no right to have the hedge torn up as it was not theirs.
Following a trial, Judge Alan Saggerson blasted their “spiteful” decision to cut the hedge down when they knew there was an ongoing dispute over who owned it.
And after he found the hedge straddled the boundary between the gardens, Mr Van Zyl, 40, and Mrs Van Zyl, 40, have been left having to pay MrWalker-Smith’s £25,000 costs.
The couple also agreed to pay £2,200 damages for trespass. They now have to move the fence back into their garden.
During the trial last month, the court heard that Mr Walker-Smith – who is corporate treasurer for tobacco giant Imperial Brands – bought his ground floor flat in Claygate, Surrey, in 2014.
Mr Van Zyl, a quantity surveyor, and his wife moved into the maisonette above the following year. She told the judge: “The hedge was consuming more or less a third of my flower bed.”
Their barrister said the couple obtained a surveyor’s report and were convinced that the hedge was entirely on their land.
For Mr Walker-Smith, barrister Jonathan Wills said the couple had “unilaterally and outrageously removed the hedge between the parties’ gardens at a time when the parties’ solicitors were corresponding as to the disputed location of the boundary.”
To make matters worse, the fence which the Van Zyls erected was on Mr Walker-Smith’s side of the boundary line, meaning they had effectively land-grabbed part of his garden, he said.
Giving evidence, Mrs Van Zyl said she considered Mr Walker-Smith the “neighbour from hell”. But Mr Wills said that Mrs Van Zyl herself deserved the title “the neighbour from hell”.
At the end of the trial, the judge said: “Each party regarded the other as being unreasonable, even spiteful, and had occasion to consider that the other has acted in ways that appear to be deliberately designed to aggravate the other.”