Alfred F Beckett Ltd v Lyons [1967] Ch 449
Court of Appeal, 29 November 1966 — sea-coal, easements and claimed public rights over the foreshore.
Facts
Alfred F Beckett Ltd held a lease from the Crown of a stretch of foreshore in the County Palatine of Durham. The company brought trespass proceedings against local inhabitants who collected sea-coal there.
The defendants claimed that inhabitants of the county were entitled to gather the coal. They relied on the history of collecting it and sought to establish a legal right, including through custom or an ancient grant. The question was whether their activity was the exercise of an enforceable right or merely something which the owner had tolerated.
Law Teacher writing support
Writing a law essay?
We choose a writer who is an expert in your area of law and qualified to at least the academic level you select. Most of our writers hold a master’s degree or PhD, have teaching experience, or both.
Send us your question and, if you wish, any marking criteria. We’ll write an essay to your instructions.
Issues
The court considered whether the claimed right could be supported as an easement, a public right or a right derived from the historical use of the foreshore. These were distinct possible foundations for the defendants’ claim; describing an activity as longstanding did not itself identify its legal basis.
Decision
The Court of Appeal rejected the inhabitants’ claimed entitlement to take the coal.
Easements and the need for benefited land
Winn LJ explained that an easement must be attached to an estate or interest in land. The land benefiting from it is the dominant tenement, while the land over which it is exercised is the servient tenement.
The defendants’ claim was based on being inhabitants of the county, rather than on the enjoyment of identified dominant land. It could not be established as an easement on that basis. A personal or communal claim to use land is not automatically an easement simply because its exercise takes place on someone else’s property.
Public rights and tolerated activities
The claimed entitlement for inhabitants of a particular county could not be treated as a public right belonging to the public at large. Nor did the recognised public rights over the foreshore, associated with navigation and fishing, include a general right to take minerals.
Harman and Russell LJJ also distinguished activities tolerated on the shore from legal rights to continue them. The evidence of early coal gathering amounted to beachcombing and did not establish the right asserted. The fact that people had been allowed to gather material without objection did not require the court to infer the claimed legal entitlement.
Legal principle
The case illustrates the need to identify the particular legal basis of a claimed land right. An easement requires benefited land; a claim made for local inhabitants is not necessarily a public right; and the history of an activity must establish the right claimed, rather than merely show that the owner had tolerated it.
Reports: [1967] Ch 449; [1967] 2 WLR 421; [1967] 1 All ER 833.
