LA3003 October ZA

Property law (Level 6)

Friday 23 October 2020

You will have TWO HOURS AND 45 MINUTES in which to answer the
questions, including 15 minutes reading time. You must answer all parts of a
question unless otherwise stated.

You will have an additional 30 minutes to download the examination paper and
to upload your saved answers to the VLE; this time should be used solely for
these purposes.

You must answer TWO of the following EIGHT questions.

© University of London 2020

Page 1 of 5
1. Seth decided to go to Australia to look after his elderly mother. Before
he left Wales he made the following arrangements for use of his various
properties.

Seth allowed his stepdaughter, Jenni, and her best friend, Karl, to live in
his house while he is away. Jenni and Karl already work for Seth, as his
gardener and housekeeper respectively. Seth was relieved that the
house was going to be looked after by people he trusted. Before moving
into the house, Jenni and Karl signed a single document headed
‘Occupation Agreement’. It contained a number of terms, including
clauses providing that: (i) the agreement was a monthly periodic
tenancy; (ii) Seth was to retain a key to allow for the delivery each
Sunday morning of a supply of fresh towels and bed linen; and (iii) ‘each
occupier is liable to pay £200 per month to live in the house’. After the
first week living in the house, Jenni told Seth that they would prefer it if
the towels could be left outside the back step because Sunday was the
only day she and Karl did not have to get up early. Seth agreed.

Seth negotiated with Chris for him to use one of his barns to open a
blacksmith’s shop. Having negotiated a favourable rent with the benefit
of advice from two local land valuers, they agreed that Chris would be
granted a four-year lease. As there wasn’t enough time to finalise the
grant of the three-year lease before Seth left for Australia, he allowed
Chris to move into the barn. In return, Chris regularly paid Seth rent each
month.

Seth executed a deed giving Happy Chuck plc, an organic chicken

farming company, the right to keep its chickens in Seth’s field ‘for three
years or until such time as Seth returns from his trip’.

Advise Seth about the legal effect of the arrangements he has made with
Jenni and Karl, Chris and Happy Chuck plc.

2. ‘The validity and durability of many third party rights over land depend
upon them being registered or protected by entry on the Land Register.
For good reason, other rights, most notably the rights of people in
occupation of the land, can take effect even though their existence
cannot be found by inspecting the Land Register. Overall, the scheme
for the protection of third party rights in the 2002 Act works well. It is
certainly far better than the corresponding scheme that operated for the
protection of third party rights in unregistered land.’

Discuss.

Page 2 of 5
3. In 2003 Adam, the owner of the registered freehold title of Home Farm,
sold an empty field to Tom, for him to use to start his business selling
farm machinery. As part of the sale transaction Tom covenanted ‘for the
benefit of the land retained by Adam’:

(i) to construct no more than one building on the field; and

(ii) to trim the hedge between the field and Home Farm once a year.

In return, Adam covenanted that he would pay half the annual cost of
cleaning and maintaining the open drain situated on the boundary
between the field and Home Farm. The drain served both properties.
Adam registered a notice against the appropriate registered title in
respect of the covenants to which Tom agreed.

In 2004 Tom built a shed on the field. In 2015 Adam sold Home Farm to
Debbie; and in 2018 Tom sold the field and his farm machinery business
to Josh.

Debbie is annoyed that Josh has not trimmed the hedge since he bought
the field. She has also heard that Josh is planning to build a new
showroom on the field for his customers. For his part, Josh has noticed
that because the open drain has been blocked for weeks, waste water
is now overflowing into his shed and damaging his stock of machinery.

Advise Debbie whether (a) she is entitled to enforce the covenants

against Tom: and (b) whether she can refuse Tom’s request for her to
pay towards cleaning the open drain, which she no longer needs to use
to drain her land at Home Farm.

Page 3 of 5
4. In 2014 Ted decided to build two houses on a plot of land of which he
was the registered proprietor. He completed the first house, The Elms,
and decided to live there. Ted used the grounds of The Elms as part of
his business running a camping site for holiday-makers. When Ted
finished building the second house, The Willows, he granted a lease of
it to Eddie for six years. The house at The Willows was surrounded by
woodland and a lake.

A little while after moving into The Willows, Eddie sunk pipes beneath
the soil of The Elms’s garden. This was the least expensive and most
direct route by which the water supply could be carried from the main
road to The Willows. Ted gave Eddie his permission for the pipes to be
laid. At the same time Eddie gave Ted permission to erect a board in the
garden of The Willows to advertise the camping site at The Elms. Eddie
also told Ted that he and the holiday-makers using his camping site
might swim in the lake.

In July 2020 Ted granted Eddie a new six-year lease of The Willows.
Shortly afterwards they had a furious row. Eddie told Ted that he and his
holiday-makers were banned from swimming in his lake. He also insisted
that Ted should immediately remove the advertising board from his
garden. In response Ted demanded that Eddie remove the water pipes
from beneath the garden in The Elms.

Advise Eddie.

How would your advice to Eddie be different if, a month after entering in
to the six-year lease in July 2020, Ted had sold the registered freehold
title to The Elms to Marty, and Marty had asked Eddie to remove the
water pipes from the garden at The Willows?

5. ‘Although formalities play an essential role in land law, importantly,

equity has developed ways that successfully ensure that formality
requirements do not operate too inflexibly or cause injustice.’

Discuss.

6. ‘Much of the mortgagor’s legal protection, most particularly that founded

in the traditional principles of equity, is largely irrelevant to the modern
context where mortgages are used to finance the purchase of the
mortgagor’s home. The position is not helped because the mortgagee
has ready access to favourable and extensive rights and remedies, most
notably possession and sale.’

Discuss.

Page 4 of 5
7. In 2014 five friends, Alvin, Bruce, Cher, Donovan and Elton, met when
they studied music at the Leeds Conservatoire. After they graduated in
2017 they decided to move to London and pool their savings to purchase
a house for them to live in while they each started to look for work. Title
to the house was expressly conveyed to them all as legal and beneficial
joint tenants.

Early in 2018 Alvin suddenly died. Shortly afterwards, Bruce went to live
in New York to take up a recording contract. He sent Cher, Donovan and
Elton a letter in which he explained: ‘I know you don’t have lots of money
right now but I need you to buy my share in the house as quickly as you
can afford to do that’. Cher and Donovan received the letter whilst at
home. They destroyed it before sending Elton a text telling him about
what Bruce had said. Elton received the text message on his
smartphone whilst on holiday abroad. He was so annoyed at being
disturbed by text messages from home that he deleted it without even
opening it.

By the summer of 2019 Cher and Donovan’s careers were not going
well. However, Elton was becoming established as a highly successful
songwriter for animated films. At Christmas that year Elton adopted a
child, Freddie, who came to live with him in the house. Elton realised he
no longer wanted to live with the others so he discussed with Cher and
Donovan the prospect of buying their shares in the house. A price was
agreed, but no further steps were taken when Cher died suddenly at a
rave, having accidentally taken a drugs overdose.

Unknown to Donovan and Elton, Cher had been consulting a solicitor

about the house. Before she left for the rave, at which she died, she had
followed her solicitor’s advice, and sent Bruce, Donovan and Elton an
email insisting on, ‘an immediate sale of the house and equal division of
the proceeds of sale’.

Bruce has now returned from the USA and wants the house to be sold,
as does Donovan. Elton wants to stay in the house because he sees it
as a stable environment for Freddie, who has been diagnosed with a
rare psychological condition.

Advise Elton about (a) the changes in the legal and beneficial ownership
of the house since the house was purchased; and (b) the likelihood of
sale.

8. ‘Before the Land Registration Act 2002, claiming title to ownership rights
by adverse possession involved the application of case law in
combination with principles of limitation. This entailed much the same
process irrespective of whether title to land was unregistered or
registered. The 2002 Act has not completely abolished adverse
possession. However, it has most definitely had a welcome impact on it,
radically altering the circumstances in which the title of the registered
owner can be displaced.’

Discuss. END OF PAPER

Page 5 of 5