Up the Creek: An Exercise in Common Sense from the Court of Appeal

Extract

The recent decision in Chelsea Yacht and Boat Co. Ltd. v. Pope [2000] 1 W.L.R. 1941 may be considered a timely reminder from the Court of Appeal that real property law applies to real property and not to chattels. The wonder of the case lies in how this, hardly particularly profound, proposition came to require two appeals for its elucidation, and how the learned judges in the District and West London County Courts came, in their desire to tread nimbly through the thickets of a short point of statutory interpretation, to lose sight of the particular wood into which they had wandered.