Cases - R v Rosewell

Record details

Name

R v Rosewell

Date

(1699)

Keywords

Easements - Rights of light

Summary

'If H. builds a house so near mine that it stops my lights, or shoots the water upon my house, or is in any other way a nuisance to me, I may enter upon the owner's soil and pull it down.'

The extract above is from a very old case and is dangerously misleading in the context of the modern approach of the law to:

• the situations in which abatement is appropriate;
• the limitations as to its exercise; and
• statutory intervention which, in certain circumstances, renders such behaviour a criminal act.

The modern approach seems to be that abatement should be confined to simple situations that would not justify the expense of legal proceedings, or where an urgent remedy is required.