Land law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Land law - Essay Example To start with, the Limitation Act 1980 makes provision for a claim for recovery of land only in circumstances where a squatter is in adverse possession, and the action will be statute-barred if it is not commenced within 12 years from the date of the dispossession.2 Schedule 1, Paragraph 8(1) provides as follows:- ‘No right of action to recover land shall be treated as accruing unless the land is in the possession of some person in whose favour the period of limitation can run (referred to below in this paragraph as adverse possession); and where under the preceding provisions of this Schedule any such right of action is treated as accruing on a certain date and no person is in adverse possession on that date, the right of action shall not be treated as accruing unless and until adverse possession is taken of the land.’3 Whether or not Mia has been in actual possession of the property for the requisite statutory term of 12 years can only be determined by reference to the relevant case law. Possession for the purposes of the Section 15 of the Limitation Act 1980 has been restated by the House of Lords in J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd. and Others v Graham and Another [2002]. In this case Lord Browne-Wilkinson remarked that the ‘only question was whether the squatter had been in possession in the ordinary sense of the word†¦ The question is simply whether the defendant squatter has dispossessed the paper owner by going into ordinary possession of the land for the requisite period without the consent of the owner’.4 In the ordinary sense of the word, possession must contain two essential elements, factual possession as well as an intention to possess. Factual possession was defined by Slade J in Powell v McFarlane (1977) as an exclusive occupation of the land to the extent that a true owner is otherwise entitled to occupy it. ‘The question what acts constitute a sufficient degree of exclusive physical control must