Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has warned landown­ers to re­frain from tak­ing the law in­to their own hands when seek­ing to evict squat­ters.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad gave the ad­vice on­Mon­day as he de­ter­mined a land dis­pute be­tween Paramin farmer Mark Nicholas and landown­er Nigel Cyrus over a one-acre par­cel of land in Mar­aval.

While Seep­er­sad ruled that Nicholas did not ob­tain ti­tle to the land through ad­verse pos­ses­sion, he did find that Cyrus tres­passed on the land when he de­mol­ished Nicholas’ wood­en shack, fruit trees and short-term crops with­out a court or­der last year.

“If he thought that he had ti­tle to the land, this is not the wild west and we live in a coun­try where the rule of law op­er­ates. He ought to have come be­fore the court and get an or­der for pos­ses­sion,” Seep­er­sad said.

Al­though he not­ed that prop­er­ty own­ers are em­pow­ered to en­force their prop­er­ty rights with­out ju­di­cial in­ter­ven­tion un­der the rem­e­dy of self-help, he stat­ed that it did not ap­ply in the case.

“Self-help is on­ly avail­able in the clear­est of cir­cum­stances, where some­body moves on to your land yes­ter­day and you come to­day and have them re­moved,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Nicholas claimed that he be­gan oc­cu­py­ing the land at Morne Co­co Road in Mar­aval 37 years ago, af­ter he was grant­ed per­mis­sion to grow short-term crops on it.

In 1989, Nicholas was told he was in breach of the lease, as he had plant­ed fruit trees and con­struct­ed the wood­en struc­ture. Nicholas re­mained in pos­ses­sion of the land un­til 2020, when Cyrus moved to forcibly evict him.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Seep­er­sad ruled that Nicholas could not ben­e­fit from ad­verse pos­ses­sion, as he had not clear­ly de­fined the par­cel of land he was claim­ing con­trol of by fenc­ing or de­mar­cat­ing it.

He al­so ruled that while Nicholas claimed that he in­stalled an ex­ten­sive ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tem on the land, he failed to pro­duce ev­i­dence of it.

In de­cid­ing on the com­pen­sa­tion Nicholas should re­ceive for the dam­age to his struc­ture and crops, Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed a $150,000 val­u­a­tion, as he not­ed that the val­u­a­tor did not give ev­i­dence be­fore him to be deemed as an ex­pert.

In the ab­sence of the ev­i­dence, Seep­er­sad or­dered $15,000 in nom­i­nal dam­ages.

Nicholas was rep­re­sent­ed by Keon Gon­za­les.