Drivers can use layby as a lavatory, judges rule
MOTORISTS who made a couple’s life a misery by using a layby opposite their home when caught short may have been annoying but did not amount to a nuisance, judges have ruled.
The Court of Appeal’s decision called a halt to John and Cherry Pusey’s 20-year campaign to close the layby and left them facing a six-figure legal bill.
Mr and Mrs Pusey had pointed to hundreds of incidents of drivers relieving themselves in the layby, as well as leaving their engines running and lights flashing.
They even employed a top environmental consultant in their quest to have the layby shut down.
Mr Pusey said his wife was once threatened with a gun whilst investigating a pick-up truck parked there and the couple were assaulted after remonstrating with a driver urinat-local-
‘Extremely exaggerated’
ing within sight of the front gate of their Exmoor home.
The layby, on the B3224 at Wheddon Cross, Somerset, had become a focus for petty theft, vandalism, flytipping and anti-social behaviour – including blaring music, shouting and swearing – the court in London was told yesterday.
Refusing to order Somerset County Council to shut the layby, the Court of Appeal judges ruled that – despite all the couple had endured – the motorists’ misbehaviour did not amount to a ‘nuisance’ in the eyes of the law.
Lord Justice Patten said Mr and Mrs Pusey had been complaining about the layby since at least 1993.
However, their attempts to persuade officials to grass it over met with ‘considerable opposition from residents’. The Puseys argued the layby interfered with the ‘reasonable enjoyment’ of their home and garden, making it impossible for them to relax.
However, the council insisted it had no power to close part of the highway and any criminal misbehaviour was a matter for the police.
The couple, who set up a CCTV camera to capture anti-social behaviour, were refused an injunction at Bristol High Court last year by Judge Roderick Denyer, who ruled that, viewed objectively, their complaints were ‘extremely exaggerated’.
Giving their reasons for dismissing Mr and Mrs Pusey’s appeal against that ruling, Lord Justice Patten – sitting with Lords Justice Ward and Longmore – ruled there had been ‘no actionable nuisance’.
The couple had to prove there was ‘a real interference with the comfort or convenience of living according to the standards of the average person’.
‘Abnormal sensitivity to noise or other matters complained of is not therefore sufficient to found a cause of action’, he said.
The use of the layby was not excessive and the Court of Appeal could not ‘properly interfere’ with Judge Denyer’s decision. The couple were also refused permission to appeal further to the Supreme Court.