The Court also found that the claimant's conduct of erecting a fence, which prevented an otherwise available access to the bulk of that land, was inconsistent with an assertion of title to whole of the land.
It quoted Bayport Industries Pty Ltd v Watson [2002] VSC 206 -
(1) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the owner of land with the paper title is deemed to be in possession of the land, as being the person with the prima facie right to possession. The law will thus, without reluctance, ascribe possession either to the paper owner or to persons who can establish a title as claiming through the paper owner.
(2) If the law is to attribute possession of land to a person who can establish no paper title to possession, he must be shown to have both factual possession and the requisite intention to possess (animus possidendi).
(3) Factual possession signifies an appropriate degree of physical control. It must be a single and [exclusive] possession, ... The question what acts constitute a sufficient degree of exclusive physical control must depend on the circumstances, in particular the nature of the land and the manner in which land of that nature is commonly used or enjoyed ... It is impossible to generalise with any precision as to what acts will or will not suffice to evidence factual possession ... Everything must depend on the particular circumstances, but broadly, I think what must be shown as constituting factual possession is that the alleged possessor has been dealing with the land in question as an occupying owner might have been expected to deal with it and that no-one else has done so.
(4) The animus possidendi, which is also necessary to constitute possession, ... involves the intention, in one’s own name and on one’s own behalf, to exclude the world at large, including the owner with the paper title if he be not himself the possessor, so far as is reasonably practicable and so far as the processes of the law will allow ... the courts will, in my judgment, require clear and affirmative evidence that the trespasser, claiming that he has acquired possession, not only had the requisite intention to possess, but made such intention clear to the world. If his acts are open to more than one interpretation and he has not made it perfectly plain to the world at large by his actions or words that he has intended to exclude the owner as best he can, the courts will treat him as not having had the [requisite] animus possidendi and consequently as not having dispossessed the owner.”
To those principles should be added and/or highlighted the following:
- When the law speaks of an intention to exclude the world at large, including the true owner, it does not mean that there must be a conscious intention to exclude the true owner. What is required is an intention to exercise exclusive control: see Ocean Estates v Pinder [1969] 2 AC 19. And on that basis an intention to control the land, the adverse possessor actually believing himself or herself to be the true owner, is quite sufficient: see Bligh v Martin [1968] 1 WLR 804.
- As a number of authorities indicate, enclosure by itself prima facie indicates the requisite animus possidendi. As Cockburn C.J. said in Seddon v. Smith (1877) 36 L.T. 168, 1609: ‘Enclosure is the strongest possible evidence of adverse possession.’ Russell L.J. in George Wimpey & Co. Ltd. v. Sohn [1967] Ch. 487, 511A, similarly observed: ‘Ordinarily, of course, enclosure is the most cogent evidence of adverse possession and of dispossession of the true owner.
- It is well established that it is no use for an alleged adverse possessor to rely on acts which are merely equivocal as regards the intention to exclude the true owner: see for example Tecbild Ltd. v. Chamberlain, 20 P. & C.R. 633, 642, per Sachs L.J.
- A person asserting a claim to adverse possession may do so in reliance upon possession and intention to possess on the part of predecessors in title. Periods of possession may be aggregated, so long as there is no gap in possession.
- Acts of possession with respect to only part of land claimed by way of adverse possession may in all the circumstances constitute acts of possession with respect to all the land claimed. ...
- Where a claimant originally enters upon land as a trespasser, authority and principle are consistent in saying that the claimant should be required to produce compelling evidence of intention to possess; in which circumstances acts said to indicate an intention to possess might readily be regarded as equivocal. ...
- At least probably, once the limitation period has expired the interest of the adverse possessor, or of a person claiming through him, cannot be abandoned.
