Anyone who continues to believe that cheekily taking over a piece of their neighbour's land and simply sitting on it and waiting for it to become theirs should take heed of a new ruling by the High Court which has awarded damages of £428,812.29 plus interest, including exemplary (i.e. "we're going to make an example of you") damages of £60,000, against a someone who took part of his neighbour's property into his own with what the court called "reckless disregard of the interests of the true owner".
The award of exemplary damages was made to deter the "squatter" from repeating the same behaviour, as the court felt that the regular award was not a sufficient deterrent.
It's a slightly different scenario from someone taking over an area of land where there appears to be no owner (the "no man's land" scenario) but even so it's something of a wake up call to those people (and they do exist!) who treat land ownership as something of a movable feast.
