A couple of cases involving bad behaviour by landlords/freeholders, both prior to and during proceedings…

Kramer v Scudder. Canterbury County Court. 14 August 2025 (unreported. We’ve seen an unapproved note of judgment. Our thanks to Miranda Grell of Staple Inn Chambers and to Duncan Lewis Solicitors for bringing it to our attention).

This was the disposal hearing of a claim for unlawful eviction, following the strike out of Mr Scudder’s defence.

Ms Kramer had an assured shorthold tenancy of a house owned by Mr Scudder. Rather remarkably the tenancy agreement, from 1999, had a 25 years fixed term. The agreement had been made on Mr S’ behalf, apparently by his aunt who was managing the property while Mr S served a prison sentence.

In 2007, after his release, Mr S brought possession proceedings, alleging the tenancy agreement was a forgery. That claim failed.

In May 2024, Mr S went to the property while Ms K was out, chained the gate and blocked access. Ms K called the police on her return, who inevitably, said it was a civil matter and did nothing. Ms K was excluded from the property. She was told by a neighbour that Mr S appeared to be burning some of her belongings.

In June 2024, Ms K applied for an injunction for re-entry. This was granted. Mr S, who had attended, apparently ‘did some damage to a door on the court estate’ as he left.

Ms K was not given re-entry. Instead, Mr S threw her belongings into the gardens, and began to, quite literally, tear the house apart with his bare hands, removing tiles from the roof, bricks from the chimney and smashing windows. (Link to Daily Mail article, with photos). According to the Duncan Lewis account of the matter, this

led to an all-night stand-off with police in riot gear, parts of which were streamed live on Facebook by the landlord’s friends.

Ms K surrendered her tenancy on 15 October 2024. She was able to attend the property in March 2025 and took photos, but most of her belongings were destroyed by that point.

The unlawful eviction claim progressed. Mr S’ defence was struck out for failure to comply with directions to provide evidence. Then at a pre-trial review hearing in July 2025

the landlord broke down and admitted liability. He abruptly punched his webcam, ending the connection, but the judge accepted that he had made a clear admission.

Mr S did not attend the disposal hearing.

The claim form limited the claim to £15,000. The Court was satisfied, given the allocation to the intermediate track, that it could award higher, but the additional issue fee must be paid within 7 days.

The court awarded

General damages for the period 15 May 2024 to 15 October 2024 – 153 days – at a daily rate of £250, accepting that M K had lost not just a room but a house in which she had lived for 25 years, and had not been able to find somewhere as good, but had been in the humiliating position of sofa surfing. However, for reasons that I will confess that I don’t understand, no Simmons v Castle uplift was applied. Total: £38,250.

Special damages. There was a lack of receipts or invoices for purchases. However, Ms K’s evidence on this was accepted and there was no sign of the claim being inflated. Value of items was the depreciated or second had value, not replacement value. Taking a broad view, this was  a 20% reduction on claimed value. Interest of 4% for the 15 months since the eviction. Award of £14,740

Total damages £53,010. And costs.

The property was sold in July 2025 for £134,000. Proceeds after mortgage were being held pending this judgment.

A contempt of court application against Mr S for breach of the injunction remains ongoing.

Now, you are not going to get a detailed report on the next case. This is partly because the actual law involved is straightforward, but more because the judgment is (for reasons that will become apparent to anyone reading it) 545 paragraphs long, and about one in three of those paragraphs  will cause your jaw to drop. So, treat this as a long read, with a favoured drink to hand, for a winter evening, or indeed, a weekend.

Abbotsley Limited & Anor v Pheasantland Limited & Ors (2025) EWHC 2639 (KB)

(Also, the associated but highly unusual end of trial but pre-judgment costs award in Abbotsley Limited & Anor v Pheasantland Limited & Ors (2025) EWHC 2076 (KB), and the procedural gotcha on summary determination of the possession claim in Abbotsley Limted v Pheasantland Limited (2025) EWHC 654 (KB))

*Deep breath* So, this was a claim for i) trespass, ii) forfeiture and possession, and iii) harassment by Abbotsley Ltd and its sole director and shareholder Vivien Saunders, who is definitely the main character.

Abbotsley/Ms Saunders had freehold title to a house, golf course and land, totalling some 220 acres. In 2003, Ms Saunders granted a lease of land, now held by Pheasantland, of some land for the construction of about 20 substantial three bedroom log cabins.

In 2023, Ms Saunders/Abbotsley brought a claim for trespass against Pheasantland and other individual leaseholders of cabins for trespass, alleging that a water pipe connection for the cabins to the main water pipe for the Abbotsley land had never been agreed and was a trespass. (Ms Saunders had been turning off the water supply or damaging the pipes repeatedly since first raising this allegation in 2020). There was a claim in forfeiture, alleging use of the cabins in breach of lease (specifically that there was permanent residence going on, whether the lease allowed for 11 months a year only), and a claim in harassment against individual cabin owners.

I’ll spare you any tension as to the outcome (as indeed does the judgment).

The trespass claim failed, as the evidence was that the water pipe connection had always been what was intended, had been paid for by Pheasantland over many years, and indeed there was provision in the lease for supply of water.

Curiously, page 17 of the Lease – which includes the covenant contained in 3.27 – was omitted from the copy of the Lease contained within the trial bundle compiled by or on behalf of Ms Saunders. The numbering of the covenants leapt from clause 3.26.2 to 4; and the copy of the lease moved from page 16 to page 18 – albeit the page number was obscured so that the loss of page 17 was not obvious. It is difficult to understand how that could have happened accidentally. Ms Saunders denied knowing anything about why or how that had happened.

(This is far from the only disclosure issue).

The individual accusations of trespass by cabin leaseholders to an area of woodland on the Abbotsley land failed because Ms Saunders had entered a s.106 agreement with the local council as a condition of the the development that there was general public access to that woodland.

The forfeiture/possession claim failed because there was no actual evidence of breach of lease, just people being there when they were entitled to be.

The harassment claim failed because, although there may have been some incidents where tempers had flared (usually after water was cut off by Ms Saunders) but no actual harassment on the evidence. A sample:

Ms Melesi denies the allegations of trespass on 16 November 2022, but accepts that she did at one point “have a moment” with her dog when she exclaimed to the sky “Go and get f**king stuffed. F**king b**ch.” Ms Melesi says that this happened along the six-foot high fence and nowhere near to Ms Saunders. It was not meant to be heard by Ms Saunders, but it appears that Ms Saunders has recording devices as well as cameras hidden in various places around the property and it must be that one of those recording devices that picked up Ms Melesi. Having seen Ms Melesi give evidence, this is plainly not the sort of language that she would normally use but, on this occasion, she lost her calm. (…) I do not believe that Ms Saunders was upset about those words. In my judgment, she would have considered it a useful piece of evidence that she could endeavour to use against Ms Melesi.

Or

But there was also the time involved in the KC for Ms Saunders, having sought and obtained permission, in getting written sign off from her client after each and every cross examination that she had asked all the questions that could be asked. This is extraordinary stuff, but having read the judgment, I can see exactly why the KC required this.

And there is more, so much more, from recanted witness statements to injunctions on a false basis… Set aside an evening or day, get that drink, and dive in. You may be some time…