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Chris Mullin Daily Mail Article 1991 Stanton Turns Really Nasty The End Of The Annus But Not The Horribilis
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ANNUS HORRIBILIS Shortly after Terry Stanton earned his criminal record for "actual bodily harm", which was unnecessary but entirely just, the Stantons planted thirty more one-foot Leylandii saplings six feet behind their ten litigious trees. I was forbidden to touch the first lot on pain of prison. Now there was a second line of nasty little trifids across the full sixty-foot width of our gardens, in case the lawsuit failed. The Old Man and His Trees Bernard Stanton was sixty-two and newly retired in 1970 when the Bournville Trust conveyed him and Freda a prime slab of Selly Oak countryside for an extra £2 a year in ground rent. It was a lucrative land grab. The garden was far too big for a couple of their age, and Bernard was too mean to hire help. He offered the land to Friends of the Earth, who wanted campaigning, not gardening. His late neighbour had solved the same problem by paying professionals to plant a copse, a prestigious status symbol among the retired upper-middle classes. Bernard wanted the same effect on the cheap, so he extracted free woodland advice from a willing expert. I listened, still as a statue, on my side of the hedge, and became a convert. A copse of native deciduous trees would have been lovely: a screen between us and a nature reserve once the Leylandii were gone. Bernard, however, had no ideology of caring for the planet. He chose Leylandii as a weapon of control and retaliation against me. They grow five times faster than native trees and cost almost nothing. You drop them into a spade slit and firm them in with your boot. A BVT official of the era called him a crook, and colleagues from his younger days still describe him as "very strange". Meanwhile, Politics In March 1992, after thirteen hateful Thatcher years, John Major called an election he was certain to lose. John Smith, as honest a gentleman as ever lived, told the voters Labour would have to raise taxes. "Honest politician" is a contradiction in terms, and the press duly trashed him. Yet at 4 am Major crossed the 317-seat line and the Tories won a fourth term. I went to the pub at 1 pm the next day. It was silent. Johnny, a shrewd Labour man educated at Her Majesty's pleasure, had meant to vote but misjudged things after his tenth pint. He died of alcoholism well before the next election. I had loved the campaign. Retired at 64, I had the radio on in my greenhouses from 9 am, sowing and pricking out seedlings, which is the nearest thing to euphoria I know, while enjoying other people's political discomfort. When the result came in I switched the radio off and gave my plants my full attention. I had Maureen, Ian, Rosie, our lovely boys and the Baggies about to win promotion. Why worry? The Tories won, but sleaze and incompetence soon gave Labour three massive majorities. The Black Cloud Then, out of the summer sky, Stanton demanded pots of money and revenge, or "justice" as he'd put it. His well-paid legal team assured him we'd settle rather than risk court, and interest was running on the sum from a year before. That was exactly why he'd waited a year. It was a better investment than anything on the market. Our solicitor forwarded the Amended Particulars of Claim from Abraham Lincoln, as I'd christened the Stantons' solicitor. They claimed damages of between £2,000 and £25,000-plus, "distress and inconvenience", and £26,000 to replace trees that were supposedly dying. As a fallback they added £2,000 for the diminished value of Stanton's land and £4,000 for the "enhancement" of mine. The whole thing was a ludicrous document, designed to leave room for negotiation or capitulation. Its flaws were a blatant legal error and an arboricultural expert relying on three-year-old evidence. The hedge outside my window was a vigorous fifteen feet of robust health. Our solicitor cheerfully told me the other side was so friendly the deadline could be extended almost indefinitely. I couldn't bear the waiting. Someone had also thrown pieces of loose hedge over, which smelled like a frame-up, so I went to the police station and had a fifty-word denial entered in the desk log. I think the clerk was baffled, but she wrote it down. The whole affair was a gigantic, lucrative game that the professionals could not lose. They always got paid. A year earlier, "Chinese whispers" suggested it could all have been settled for £6,000 if I dropped the assault charge. We could have shaken hands and gone home. Instead the Stantons kept digging. Maureen and I agreed we couldn't afford more extortionate fees, so I would defend myself. This terrified me, and Maureen's absolute faith in me made it worse. Building a Defence Staying indoors while the garden grew was torture. I sat at my ancient "steam-driven" word processor, producing nothing for an hour at a time, though deep down I was mulling. After days I had fifteen hundred words correcting the nonsense in their claim. By their arithmetic, my alleged trimmings would have reduced the trees to negative height, and yet there stood the hedge outside, fifteen feet of it. I also learned that the BVT would write anything, say anything, placate and mediate, but ran from any action that might open a can of worms. I needed an expert. My botanist friend Tony Sames passed me to a council employee barred from court, who passed me to a friend: John Wetherall, the best in the land. The Stanton expert was the established court tree authority in the Midlands, so I had to go outside the area to find someone to stand up to him. John knew him well, as they both belonged to a "tiny" association of nine national experts. At the end of June he visited. A friendly neighbour, a botanist and widow of a famous geneticist, let us photograph the hedge from her side. She hadn't noticed the nine-foot reduction I'd made, which says everything about how invisible it was. Then we spotted Stanton's new line of one-foot Leylandii. John plotted a datum line along the fence and measured the distance to every trunk, about 0.25 m, or ten inches. The measurements went onto a strip of graph paper, which became formidable, objective evidence in both the County and Appeal courts. Court Nerves The thought of standing in a courtroom made me ill, so I went to watch. I wandered the corridors of the old Victorian oak-panelled courts, soaking up the hum of patient explanations, exasperation and despair. I chatted to the attendants, who assumed I was a solicitor and told me anecdotes. I was comforted to watch a barrister get ripped apart by a judge, and I noticed there wasn't a single litigant in person. I was about to become one. On Monday evenings I attended the Citizens Advice Bureau's pro-bono legal sessions. When signing in I told the receptionist my opponents' firm would have a conflict of interest, so I always waited longer. I rarely got more than twenty minutes. Most advisers were fresh from law school and immediately said my case was too complex and I needed a solicitor. One youngster sent me to the Birmingham University Law Library, which was open to the public and empty over the holidays. Another assured me that "judges fall over themselves to help the litigant in person", which gave me enormous confidence. The library staff were wonderful, and I photocopied lavishly. Patrick Dalton Crushes My Soul I also tried the Free Legal Representation Unit at Central England University. Patrick Dalton, who ran it, was so conscientious it ended in an early death. He was fascinated by a case combining law and arboriculture, but said it was too complex to take on. He was also convinced I was "absolutely guilty as hell" and that my 1,500-word defence would get me ripped apart. My confidence was shattered. Then he cut it to two hundred words, rejecting most as self-incriminating. He left me three gems: " I admit "technical trespass" in entering the air space over the Plaintiff's land. " Distress and inconvenience cannot be the subject of pecuniary loss. " Damaging trees cannot "enhance" my land, so there can be no claim in tort for that. Then he demanded, "What is tort?" "A civil wrong," I said. He'd asked twice before. When I showed him Schedule Two of the Bournville Management Scheme, whose first nine lines defined hedges, he said "meaningless" and told me to get a solicitor. He knew the law brilliantly but missed the facts, because he was a lawyer fixated on ten trees. The Lost Writ Victor Thomson, a former solicitor and the BVT's legal secretary, rang with news that made me whoop: the Stanton writ and injunction might have expired because it hadn't been followed up within a year. At court administration, a mile from the courthouse, I queued behind divorces and debt claims. The head clerk was fetched, said "This is not easy", and admitted the papers were lost, not even mislaid. The 29th of July deadline was fast approaching. Back at the CAB that evening, a counsellor scolded me: "You must file that defence tomorrow." She then explained, almost sure, that I didn't have to send it to the other side. I muttered, "Damn that for a tale." My six-word first sentence, "The Plaintiff's particulars are not correct", replaced twelve hundred words. Then came the pearl: I could demand "More and Better Particulars of Claim", forcing them to prove or admit their assertions. I got less than ten out of ten for my first attempt. Twelve days passed without a reply. For the second try I used a blank N9 form from the original bundle, a standard form for poor debtors who can't pay their bills. I ignored the household-outgoings boxes, but the big defence box and the counterclaim box next to it were useful. I typed my defence at half size and it fitted perfectly. It survived intact through three years of many courts. I still wonder who packed an N9 into the bundle, a clerk or Abraham Lincoln himself, imagining me as a pensioner paying week by week. Terry Stanton swept down the croft in his everyday Jag, arms raised in triumph, because his solicitor told him the summons wasn't being defended. Presumably he was thinking, "At last, I've got Jones." In reality Old Abe would soon be puzzled to receive a demand for more information, and to learn that two of his Counsel's professionally drafted particulars were contrary to the law of tort. Applying to the Court A sympathetic clerk at court administration suggested I apply to lift the injunction as well. Her words were, "Why not? Here is a form," and she handed me a biro. Clerks can't give legal advice, but this wasn't legal advice, was it? In a second the whole case changed direction. I wrote on form N244 that I wished to apply for the lifting of the undertaking, because the BVT covenants obliged me to maintain the boundary hedge on my own land. No longer was I a man lopping ten trees. I was asking permission to do what the law demanded of me. (Lord Justice Millett later used the word "deemed" twice in his Court of Appeal judgment, so important was this to the case.) A hearing date of 14th September arrived within days. I also consulted my solicitor friend QE1, a legal legend whom Patrick Dalton had named his best pupil. She had once been willing to take on the government, British Rail and British Nuclear Fuels, pro bono, over the transport of dangerous nuclear fuel through my area. That project was a secret and a saga for another day. QE1 said my case needed a specialist solicitor, but she offered ideas: sue for hedge invasion (too tricky), counterclaim for assault and nuisance (partly wrong, as Lord Tim had dismissed any right to light, and there's no right to a view), strike out the action as frivolous, or pay money into court. That last one was an emotionally tortuous decision I'll return to. I filed a further application to strike out the action and permit a counterclaim, with the claimed counterclaim an order against the Plaintiff not to trespass. Looking at it now, number two is barmy, but nobody minded. At the Law Library I learned that counterclaim items needn't relate to the claim, though a later solicitor told me that was rubbish and would have lost me exam marks. In the counterclaim column I listed technical trespass, damages against Terry for actual bodily harm, the firearm and iron-pipe assault, the high tower, the bonfire nuisance, and libel and slander. Was my claim greater than his against me? "Yes." The August Bank Holiday Queue I took the counterclaim to the CAB, arriving early, but so did seven or eight others. It was the August Bank Holiday and there was no notice that the Unit would be closed. While we queued, privacy was forgotten. I could answer most of their questions: whom to write to about complaints against doctors and dentists, and housing problems. None needed a solicitor. I felt a thrill of confidence, though it meant my counterclaim never got shown to a professional. Mr Finch's Mislaid Report John Wetherall's affidavit was almost ready when something zoomed over the horizon: Abraham Lincoln sent "Better Particulars of Claim", including an expert report from Mr Finch that had been mislaid in the old man's jacket. You could see the creases in the photocopy. It was a year old and three years older than the first report, declaring that the trees could not be saved and needed a telescopic crane and £25,703.13 of semi-mature replacements. He claimed I'd removed the "central core of foliage", which doesn't exist in Leylandii. It was patronising, plausible to a layman, and would have carried weight against an unchallenged witness. Now John could amend his affidavit. Abraham Lincoln assumed I hadn't a clue, and he was dead right, though not about where my knowledge had come from. I sent a third demand. John's presentation was superb, with a pull-out graph of every tree, photographs of lush hedge, BVT letters, the Management Scheme's second schedule and the guidelines recommending hedge heights of six feet six. I added my own parcel of exhibits: a letter containing Stanton's promises twelve years earlier, the letter that started the court proceedings a year ago, my solicitor's hospital-emergency explanation, and the unanswered third request. All were filed under "Defendants Application to the Court 14th Sept 1992". Abraham Lincoln responded the next day with an affidavit and a 24-item schedule opposing my application on grounds of delay and frivolity. It was very unconvincing, but a judge was swayed, possibly by the enormity of the claim. All my cards were on the table. I spent a day with Ian turning them into a speech for court, thorough and valid, which I would read aloud. Ian thought it should be deposed to the court, but I preferred to speak it. What I bitterly resented was sending the boys away after the briefest of cuddles. Grandma came to her own, a ready repository for demands of love and cuddle. Come Saturday all five lads came together to go to the Baggies. That was Ian, Christopher, Andrew, Jim Cowling our friend, next door but-one neighbour and me. We loved the old "Star and Commercial"; before every game it was a blessed relief for three hours every fortnight. We were over the shock of relegation; got used the quaint names of our fellow teams in the old third division and enjoyed winning far more games than we lost. So we felt better each Saturday evening rather than worse. I had spent two months, hour after hour, day after day, absorbed, obsessed, dreaming, mulling but what of Terry Stanton? It had not been a lucky time of the year for his last three mid-Septembers. |
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