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The Times September 2010 - 1

The Times September 2010 - 2

Chris Mullin Daily Mail Article

Boris Johnson interview 1998

The Jones Family

Michael

Chronology

Hedgeman - The Book

The Berlin Wall

Into the Roaring Nineties

1991 Stanton Turns Really Nasty

Annus Horribilis

The End Of The Annus But Not The Horribilis

The Judgement

The Hand Of Peace

Fame

The Big One

No Carte Blanche

Come On Stanton Pay Up

April Fool

Niniteen Ninety Seven

A Little Help From The Lord

The Stanton family was under heavy strain. The old man was eighty-seven and doddery, and for the last seven years he had been close to his eldest son, Paul Terry. Then his wife Freda died suddenly and violently. She dropped a full, heavy bottle on her foot in the kitchen, and it caused a fatal blood clot. Accidents in the home are common among the elderly, and she was vulnerable. She was also, without doubt, under stress. She had been the third member of a triumvirate of revenge and spite that kept a spy tower at the end of their garden overlooking our boundary. The three of them had commissioned an intrusive photographic survey from a so-called expert, whom the surviving two then refused to pay because he was inadequate. For nine years she and her husband had waged a battle against us, blocking our light and amenity and lighting smoky fires.
Somebody had to take the blame, and father and son hated me for it. Soon afterwards the old man tired of losing. He withdrew from the contest in an unacceptable way: he sought solace with another woman for his last few years. Paul Terry made it clear on behalf of the sons that she would not inherit, and the old man made the property over to them. That was a sensible arrangement, but it should have been disclosed to the Recorder. We did not yet know about it, and the fight over costs had to be waged in the old man's name because the action had started in his name. Paul Terry Stanton (PTS), the magnificent stag, raised his noble head, pawed the ground and lowered his antlers.
Four years earlier my affidavit had included a photograph of a line of Leylandii saplings stretching the whole width of the boundary. They had once competed with the huge hedge a couple of yards away. Now that hedge had been reduced, and they were vigorous, ugly bullies thrusting their growing tips skyward. One news report said PTS intended to grow them into the stratosphere. His defence was,
"These do not form a hedge along the boundary so they do not fall within the Bournville Trust covenant."
And on costs he shrieked,
"I am not paying a penny piece of that man's costs."
That antler point got broken off at the Court of Appeal taxation court in London. Payment of my costs had been guaranteed by his solicitors, because the action was only allowed to proceed on the basis that the defendant would not be unfairly disadvantaged if it failed. Ray, my solicitor, now employed only to recover costs, quickly compiled his bill and made an offer. The Stanton camp refused it, preferring taxation, obstruction and delay to saving money.
At this point I paid £1,500 to Nick, a highly intelligent specialist in constructing bills of costs for taxation judges. He regarded the judges as unpredictable and treated his work as an art rather than a science. We spent a day and a half together, plus two sessions in the county court. First he wanted the file from my previous solicitor, which was four years old but represented the first wedge of legal expense. Ray had virtually done the Court of Appeal account, but it needed Nick's expert touch. Copies went to the Tax Master and the Stanton camp.
I met Ray in London, having taken the expensive early train, and was surprised to find the Stantons neither present nor represented. They were wise: no day off work and no solicitor to pay. I was refused my expenses for the day, although Ray's were allowed. We also never recovered the costs of an abortive day with our barrister, caused by his clerk's booking error, which his chambers paid for but not us. Items like these accumulated into a large sum for which we were never compensated. Ray argued well, but the judge was ruthless. We finished in the morning and I went home. The amount allowed was £101,500 and the judge signed. When Stanton gave notice of appeal I was told it would cost £33,000, which would have wiped us out if we had lost.
Ray demanded immediate payment. The professional guarantee put extra pressure on PTS, who disliked paying anything at any time. We took out a statutory order for bankruptcy, based only on the Court of Appeal costs, which had to go to the now feeble old man. I received a letter from his "insolvency advisor" saying all his assets had gone but offering £6,000 in settlement of all costs. I faxed it to Ray from our Community Resources Centre, and had scarcely arrived home when Ray rang. He had pointed out to them the criminal offence of the property conveyance that should have been disclosed to the Recorder. Events accelerated. At the County Court building, as I was about to go in, Abe handed me a cheque made out to me personally from his client account. Ray said at once,
"That's mine."
I gave him a cheque for the same amount, made out to his firm, which was substantially out of pocket, and so were we.
Ray would not settle up with John Wetherall, our tree expert, and had been using delaying techniques unknown to me. John disliked Ray intensely, and a couple of years later Ray used this against me. I was deeply grateful to John. He was absolutely loyal, and his skilled professional witness turned the tide when we had no legal representation. Abe himself told me on the phone,
"Of course, we did not appoint our tree man; you did and you got the right one."
Then John did something that shocked me and turned Maureen from love to hate. At nine one evening, long after she had gone to bed, our doorbell rang. It was John, an hour and a half's drive from home. He had just visited Paul Terry Stanton and offered to sell him the debt of the remainder of his fee, owed by Ray's firm. It sounded like treachery. Maureen came down in her dressing gown, heard the explanation repeated, and was furious. She did not sleep that night and her anger has never subsided. John's fee per hour was astronomical, and he could name any number of hours. I asked if he would take a £1,000 cheque and forget it. He had not sent me his final account, and he accepted that such matters were left to my lawyer and that I would never refuse to pay him. John was ashamed of himself, and I forgive him. I would like to believe he was always my friend.
At the county court taxation the tax master was even more severe than his appeal court counterpart, and very reasonable claims were not admitted. The law allows only the reasonable, however much a client may choose to pay his professionals. I had got the £1,000 for John exactly right, and in the end Stanton paid. John then discovered that PTS had refused to pay £900 of his own tree expert's bill on the grounds that he was no good, correctly judging that the man would not take him to court.
Now it was come-uppance time for the lawyers in my life. In 1989 Stanton had reported his first solicitor to the Solicitors' Complaints Bureau when she lost her file on me. He sacked her, and that is how Abe got the job. The Bureau became a public joke, and the Tory Lord Chancellor dissolved it and set up the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS). With a cynical heart I had a crack at the OSS, listing Abe's two sins.
First, despite phone calls, faxes and letters, he neglected to ensure that Recorder Woltan's amended judgement was in the file put before the Appeal Judges. Second, he failed to inform the Recorder of the conveyance of the old man's property. Had Abe's firm conveyed it? The OSS said that was confidential. The legal world has a built-in procrastination factor: the case worker is ill, on leave, or has retired; or has come back from abroad with a nasty virus; or is in court or in conference; and written replies promise action "in due course".
They said a complaint against an opponent's solicitor would not be accepted, because of client confidentiality. If a law had been broken, I must go to court or the police. We had been through enough litigation. I rang a solicitor, whose number the WM Radio presenter Ed Doolan had given out, who was prepared to sue fellow solicitors. He dismissed my desire for justice, couldn't care less about the honour of his colleagues, and said he should really charge me £230 for his time but would let me off. My early solicitors and the curry-breathed ex-barrister had sold me down the river in court after I paid them a month's pension, and the professional body didn't want to know about that either. I spent an hour on the phone with a senior OSS case worker, calling his organisation and profession bad names and saying my words should not be attributed to him personally. He replied,
"I appreciate that more than you can possibly know. You have gone through so much; I am so sorry that there is nothing I can do to bring you the justice you feel you deserve."
I turned to the Bar Council's Disciplinary Committee, concerning my first barrister for incompetence and my opponent's barrister for, among other things, hinting I was a "Peeping Tom". The barristers took conduct far more seriously than the solicitors did. Charges were made, both men had to spend hours constructing defences, and the committee exonerated both. But it imposed a severe reprimand on the Stanton barrister for the words he used:
"Words are important."
I got an apology, which was not that important. Ray heard that the stricture upset the barrister greatly. Good. He had been humiliated for representing a couple of hoodlums, and for his sneering use of power in drafting the injunction that kept me from part of my garden for five years. I had pledged to serve my revenge cold, and I had seen him deeply disappointed when he lost the trial just before Christmas. What annoyed me most was that the Law Society, through the OSS, never put a case for Abe to answer. As for my first barrister, he would at least have to spend lots of his £300-an-hour time defending himself. My first solicitor? Ray offered to sue him, saying,
"I expected that load of rubbish from the Law Society."
I could not face another couple of years in the courts, so I put both legal teams through the wringer again by referring them en bloc to the Legal Services Ombudsman, who by act of parliament must be a non-lawyer. She upheld the decisions of the Bar Council and the Law Society.
Then a solicitor friend sent me the Birmingham Law Society Gazette, containing an astonishing advert placed by the Barristers' Chambers whose honorary president was Recorder Woltan. It was unlikely he knew of it. It outlined the facts of Stanton v Jones to advertise the chambers' excellence, including that I had cut the hedge down to seven feet, a claim the honorary president had rejected as judge. It said nothing of the grief and stress to my family, the physical assault on me, or the absence of any law against hedge nuisance. It celebrated endless litigation rather than the compromise and conciliation that the Recorder had preached and Lord Woolf's "Access to Justice" report accepted. In other words, crude lolly, exploiting the poorer client flung into court with only an outrageous settlement on offer. I put together a point-by-point objection and took the Leader of Chambers to the Bar Council's Disciplinary Committee. It was refused, though it cost many expensive man-hours. I also referred the Gazette's editor to the OSS and sent a copy via the Birmingham Law Society. After a few days I rang and, to my surprise, got through to the right man. He was irritated, and when his phone was interrupted (no mobiles then) he said politely,
"Excuse me for a moment Mr Jones."
"Not at all," I answered, thinking it a wheeze. He was genuine and tried to press the hold button, but missed it and shouted at his interrupter,
"Will you gerroff this line, I've got bloody Michael Jones on it."
He did listen, but he was skilled at talking while getting nowhere.
I was now talking daily to people with nasty-neighbour stories. The Co-op check-out lady was one, and had followed our saga with fascination. She had told her own solicitor she knew me, and he had replied,
"He is completely mad, isn't he?"
The Bournville Village Trust and Classic FM organised a Gardeners' Forum at George Cadbury Hall, packed, with top gardeners on the panel. I submitted the question,
"Should there be a law to control nuisance hedges?"
It came near the end, with a murmur of recognition. There was no straight answer, since they were gardeners, not lawyers or politicians, but the most interesting reply was,
"When growing a massive hedge consideration should be given to the person living the other side of it."
The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Bill was going through the House of Lords, and it occurred to me that an amendment might be slipped in. I went to see Denis Howell, now Baron Howell of Aston Manor. He showed off his peerage paraphernalia and his gallery of Labour leaders from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair, and we talked about gardening, which he loved. Once a left-wing firebrand, junior minister, MP and Aston Villa director, he had suffered family tragedy and serious heart trouble. I never learned what happened to my idea. I could have talked all day.
On 11th May we went to the Scilly Isles for a much-needed holiday. We were short of leisurely, intelligent conversation and took the train to Penzance, where the five-and-a-half-hour journey did the trick. Walking through the cemetery on St Mary's, I came upon a fresh grave with a wooden cross bearing the words The Right Honourable Sir Harold Wilson, 1916-1995. Nobody had been much moved by his death a year earlier, since he had been in dementia for years, but now, briefly alone, I spared a tear. There was a three-month-old bunch of flowers, and below it some tiny daisies. I dropped one on the grave. Maureen sat contentedly nearby while tame birds perched at her feet.
Along a promenade garden there was a line of dead Leylandii, seven years' growth killed in one stormy night by gale, wave and salt. I had received scores, possibly hundreds, of requests for advice on killing these trees, or even their owners. One man sent his CV, highlighting service in the British Nuclear Police, an organisation with plausible links to the Secret Service and "understandings" about unfortunate accidents. Another described his method:
"I always counsel the owners first before cutting them."
"How long do you spend on that?"
"Oh, two or three minutes at least, then we're away. They won't find us. We do this in the States for four months in the summer."
We had many visitors, including Max Ayriss from Nuneaton, who brought me stacks of stationery. Denis Harris put great research into visiting MPs at their constituency surgeries, and was never refused on the grounds that the MP was not his own. Betty Boothroyd was particularly helpful. She wrote to the minister and got the typical reply of sympathy and goodwill with no promise of action. I told victims all over the country,
"Get in touch with your MP."
"But my MP is useless."
"But this is all we have got. Parliament is where we make law."
Most had never contacted their MP before, and I was surprised by the cross-party support. What struck me was the ignorance of mature, well-read people, sometimes academics, about why policy changes need new laws. One day an anonymous letter arrived from someone claiming to be a Royal Gardener who loathed Leylandii. He enclosed his cure: a handful of commercial salt in a can of water, applied in the dead of night.
At the RHS Chelsea show, Dominic Kennedy, The Times Court Correspondent, reported from the Royal Marquee and told me months later that Leylandii and Stanton v Jones dominated the conversation. Good. Snobbery in gardening is as odious as anywhere, and if Leylandii were to be rejected, I was happy to be its doughty opponent. Roddy Llewellyn, the Royal Gardener, whether or not he was in that tent, had written a Mail on Sunday article supporting Maureen and me, read by eight million. He told us so before yet another Esther programme.
ITV's The Cookson Report was a popular prime-time hit, and the BBC tried to match it with the Ransome Report. Leylandii nuisance had captured the public imagination, but the programme combined it with two other emotive issues, was too complex for one show and was not well researched. The possibility of legal action led to its withdrawal from repeats. After the debacle of the first Esther programme the Stantons declined further exposure, but the researchers wanted a new case.
Brenda and John Law had bought a new bungalow in a Hereford meadow from the landowner Foley, whose family goes back to the court of Charles II and Nell Gwyn. They had paid no attention to a line of tiny Leylandii saplings six feet from the walls, and signed a conveyance stating the property could only be sold back to Foley. For six years it was idyllic, as the Stanton menace had been for us. Over the next four came tolerance, apprehension, fear and anger as the trees swallowed the bungalow. Then Foley offered to buy at a fraction of its value. We were told he had done this before, successfully, when the husband died and the wife had dementia. The programme should have concentrated on him.
Maureen and I sat in the studio audience for hours before our feature, and Roddy Llewellyn sat next to her. He introduced himself and asked if we had read his article. Maureen has never read or watched anything about our campaign, and we never read the Mail on Sunday, which surprised him. I had no idea of his royal connection or eminence in the gardening world. He and Maureen became friends at once over crosswords during the long wait. The production team struggled; for the indoor set they hauled an enormous Leylandii upright with ropes and pulleys at the start of our act. We got fifteen minutes, broadcast only once, which seemed a lot of slog, but our expenses and a hotel were paid. As publicity for changing the law it was worth thousands, far beyond my power to beg, and meanwhile Ray Burford continued to ask me for money.
We then went to Yorkshire for a few days by car, unbooked, and it was the cheapest and best of all our holidays. In Harrogate the tourist centre directed us to a lovely en-suite B&B. We recorded the Ransome Report broadcast and buzzed off without telling anyone. We drank Theakston's best bitter in a pub, ate a hearty Yorkshire breakfast and visited the RHS gardens at Harlow Carr, an ambition fulfilled. That evening our landlady was waiting. Her husband had recorded the programme and she had watched it that day:
"I've been telling everyone, that man had breakfast in my house this very day."
On our return we watered the hanging baskets, went through fifty letters, and played the answering machine, which brought devastating news. Mary, my brother Roger's widow, had unexpectedly died at 89, seven years after him. They had been married forty-nine years and met when my sister Connie brought her home after her first day at work. Mary was a local Handsworth girl, twenty, whose father had died a few years earlier. I was nine, and for the next ten years we fought violently, and she won. She insisted Roger take me to the pictures, which was great when the film was an "A" needing an accompanying adult. Roger, the kindest and gentlest of men, deeply religious and saintly in his last years, never made me feel an intruder. Mary was fun-loving, extrovert, energetic and a planner. I will write about her and the extended family in a later book.
My main aims remained to make old man Stanton pay and to get an operable law against nuisance hedges, whether by amending existing law, making a new law, or, in our case, persuading Bournville Village Trust to enforce its covenants. The new line of Leylandii stretched sixty yards along the boundary, ten feet from it, with scarcely room for the Stantons to squeeze past along half its length. The old hedge was starved of light, moisture and nutrient on its southern side and could not compete with its new rivals. In three years we would have real problems.
The appeal and county court costs overlapped, with the hearings fifteen months apart, in that unusual order. Two years after the judgement, an allocatur (a legal term new to me, an order to pay within three weeks) was issued, and Ray sent it to Abe. Nothing happened, so Ray took out the bankruptcy writ and served it on the old man personally, with the results already described. A hearing was set for 11th November at 11 o'clock. We arrived a little late because the whole building observed two minutes' silence, but the Taxation judge had studied the papers. Nick represented me. I liked him very much and promised he would feature in "Stanton v Jones", the film. I nominated Robbie Coltrane... no, Robert Coltrane, for my part, and I forget who he chose for his own. Nick's expenses were chargeable to the total costs but Ray's were refused. The younger Stanton made his own objections, with Abe in attendance, now working for another firm and of course earning his fee. Every item was argued, taking the whole time, and the court adjourned for two months until the New Year. PTS had set out to delay and had won this round. But just you wait till the New Year, mate.