Taxpayers will pick up the estimated £50,000 bill for a “ridiculous” legal battle in which a City banker was taken to court by his neighbour for playing football in a communal garden with his five-year-old son.
No less than a top QC, two High Court judges and two sittings of the West London Magistrates’ Court were required to deal with the case of Christopher Fleming-Brown, who was privately prosecuted by his neighbour, Paula Lawton, under the Town Gardens Protection Act 1863.
Ms Lawton, of Notting Hill, West London, had accused Mr Fleming-Brown, 46, of breaking by-laws relating to a communal space, the Arundel and Elgin Ornamental Gardens, when he indulged in a game of football with his young son.
But magistrates kicked Ms Lawton’s case into touch in November last year, ruling that such a small kickabout did not constitute a game of football, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.
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They ruled that, as Mr Fleming-Brown and his son were not “teams” of footballers, they could not be guilty of breaching the bylaw on at least two occasions in October 2004 and March last year when Ms Lawton saw them playing. The magistrates also ruled that the activities of father and son did not constitute acts that might damage trees, shrubs and flowers, contrary to a separate bylaw.
Unprepared to let her case rest there, Ms Lawton, 63, yesterday took her campaign to the High Court in London, where she asked Lord Justice Waller and Mr Justice Treacy to overturn the ruling and order a retrial.
Lord Justice Waller said: “We think the justices took too narrow a view of what constituted football or a similar game by paying too much attention to the dictionary definition, which referred to two teams seeking to put the ball into the opposition’s goal.
“By any commonsensical, natural interpretation, the respondent and his son were playing football or a similar game.”
But despite the judges’ finding that Mr Fleming-Brown, who was concerned that a criminal conviction could affect his travelling to the United States, had in fact been playing football with his son, they refused to accede to his neighbour’s wishes.
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In coming to their decision, the judges said the fact that the bylaws had now been changed to allow ball games between parents and their children would make a retrial superfluous.
After dismissing Ms Lawton’s challenge, the judges ordered that the legal costs of the case — likely to run into tens of thousands of pounds — must be paid out of central funds or in other words, by the tax- payer.
Speaking after the case yesterday Mr Fleming-Brown said: “This was about a five-year-old and his dad kicking a ball in a large communal garden.”
His solicitor, Andrew Gregg, issued a scathing attack on the legal process that had allowed such a case to take up valuable court time and cost so much public money.
“This was the kind of case that should never have been brought. It’s ridiculous. It was bordering on the vexatious and has been an absurd waste of time and money,” he said.
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But Ms Lawton strongly disagreed and said she felt “outraged as a citizen of this country” by what had happened in court.
“They appeared to have defined that this was indeed a game of football, but they have found against me. This has set a dangerous precedent. The court services are a travesty,” she said.
Ms Lawton feared that she would face a “harrowing” legal costs bill. But the judges said that she would not have to pay as the court would order costs out of central funds.