There are some things worth fighting for and spending a hell of a lot of money on but I definitely don’t think that a 76cm piece of land is one of them.

Images VIA

My views clearly aren’t shared by great-grandparents Annette and Raymond Timmins who were involved in an 11 year dispute with their 85 year old neighbour Alan Soden over a gate that opened from the back garden of his house onto their parking space. They started arguing over in it 2007, but things really escalated in things really started to escalate when one of Soden’s lodgers left a passive aggressive note asking them to move their car as he was worried he was going to dent it with his bicycle when he was bringing it out from the house.

The Timmins response to this was to build a fence that blocked his gate. This led Soden to take them both to court, where he was eventually awarded 76cm-wide right of way through their space. Unfortunately this has also cost him £76,000 in legal fees and the Timmins have been ordered to pay £27,000 of this. They’ve also got their own £45,000 legal bill too, so it really looks as though there weren’t any winners in this battle  at all. Probably would have been cheaper to move house.

Annette revealed how the conflict had pretty much destroyed her life:

We’ve spent almost everything I have. It cost me everything. We’re now in depression.

We just can’t believe this has happened. I have been parking on my land.

But now I can be sued for parking on that 76cm space. He claimed he had a right of way and he won.

If I could afford to challenge the decision then I would, but we’ve been left with nothing.

We’ve been left with absolutely nothing now. I regret it all because I’ve lost everything.

Surprisingly given the long nature of the dispute and its cost, even Soden (below) wasn’t that stoked about his victory, instead offering words of condolences to the Timmins:

I knew I was in the right, that is why I would not give up.

But yes, I admit there is no real sense of victory and the only people who have really won out of all this are the expensive lawyers.

The money it has cost us is ridiculous when you look at what we were fighting over.

What a bunch of morons. Think what they could have spent that money on instead of beefing with each other all these years. And the time they could have saved. Think they all deserve what they got to be honest. Dickheads.

For more disputes, check out this guy who filmed his methhead neighbours for three years. Crazy behaviour.