When people buy a piece of property, they have an expectation that the property confers on them a certain degree of reasonable rights for what they can do with it.

However, these rights can often vary depending on the property, and solicitors often undertake conveyancing work and surveys to check for potential legal issues.

A rather infamous example of this is chancel repair liability, where people who bought property on former church land could be forced to pay for the cost of church repairs, something that they can get insurance against as long as they know it could happen.

There are also limits to what you can do on a piece of land depending on the nature of the deed (freehold or leasehold), the location and whether the building is listed.

However, one unusual law that highlighted that property rights are not inherently absolute involves a silver fox farm and a particularly unruly neighbour.

Hollywood V Emmett

The case of Hollywood Silver Fox Farm v Emmett [1936] is a rather unusual one in the world of noise complaints and therefore set a rather unusual precedent.

The silver fox is a variation of the more common red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and has for centuries been hunted for its fur. It is also relatively easy to breed for this purpose due to its monogamous nature.

Hollywood Silver Fox Farm was one such business and had set up an environment to breed the foxes as efficiently as possible.

The one issue with silver foxes is that they are inherently very timid, reacting very badly to loud noises and are prone to miscarriage.

Unfortunately, the owners had fallen out with Mr Emmett, a neighbouring farmer, who told his son to fire his gun in the air on the border of his land and the breeding pens, intentionally attempting to cause them to miscarry.

Mr Emmett was either an animal rights activist and objected to the fox farm on principle or thought the fox farm would devalue the land he intended to build on.

He intentionally did what he could to scare the foxes on his own land, impair the breeding process and cause Hollywood Farm to either move away or shut down.

He believed under the principle of Mayor of Bradford v Pickles that someone has the right to undertake legal actions on their property irrespective of motive. If firing a gun on one’s own property was legal with a licence, as it would have been in 1936, then the fact the aim was to disrupt another business was irrelevant.

However, the court disagreed with that assessment. Whilst owning and firing a gun was legal for him to do, the intention mattered significantly, since the only reason he was doing so was to cause harm to another business.

This also nullified his other defence, which was that the foxes’ unusual sensitivity should not stop him from enjoying his own land. That may well be the case, but the intent of the gunshots was admitted and thus made Mr Emmett liable to pay £250 in damages (14,800 adjusted for inflation).

He was also subject to an injunction limiting the noise he could make during the breeding season for silver foxes.

Fox fur farming was banned in 2000, but the legacy of Hollywood Farm lives on in this judgement and its effects on property rights.