What a great case Day v Brownrigg is! Thanks Andrew, hadn’t read that before. Brilliant illustration of how there can be “damage” but no legal remedy.

In case someone is ever writing an article on “Fruitless Neighbour Disputes Which are Condemned by Trial Judges”, they could also add the recent NSW decision in Clavel v Savage [2013] NSWSC 775 (14 June 2013) http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/nsw/NSWSC/2013/775.html (the judgment is so long it has to be split into 3 pdfs!) To quote from the judge’s preliminary “Cri de Coeur"

[5] Some controversies should never be litigated, regardless of the rights and

wrongs of the particular parties. This controversy involved oral hearings

over some 15 weeks (including interlocutory hearings), with the final

hearings commencing on 25 October 2010 (with an original estimate of

eight weeks) proceeding until the end of term, recommencing on 21

February 2011 and concluding at the end of June 2011.

6 The evidence included complaints, some, allegedly, as background to the

relationship: of the use of rocks from the adjacent National Park in

residences of one or other of the neighbours; the failure to obtain building

or development approvals for renovations to the houses of one or other of

the neighbours; the number of times one or other neighbour mowed or

raked the grass; the number of times a motor dinghy was driven up and

down the water adjacent to the beach where and when the other

neighbour was partying; the games played by one or other neighbour in

the front yard; stones being thrown on the roof; and the “last straw”

example was the “adventures” or aggression surrounding the escape of

and hunt for a pet rabbit.

7 The evidence as to the pet rabbit was adduced during the tenth day of

hearing, during the evidence in chief of Mr Clavel (a statement having

been tendered), at which I remarked that the case was becoming more like

“Alice in Wonderland” (Transcript 1015). At that time, it was the chasing of

the rabbit that triggered the analogy, but no less relevant was the growing

feeling that if all involved at Great Mackerel were not mad, the evidence

was certainly giving indictions of it.

Regards

Neil