Legal: French court rules against using neighbour's land for parking

The convenience of parking a car outside your house is no grounds for right of way over a neighbour’s land, France’s highest court has ruled.

In a case referred by an appeals court in Lyon, the Cour de Cassation heard from a property owner wanting to stop neighbours driving through her courtyard to get to their house.

Access to that house was already guaranteed by a droit de servitude for a narrow footpath, or through a gate on the other side of the property too small to allow a vehicle through.

The owner of the house, however, who inherited it from her mother, argued that the droit de servitude meant vehicles should be allowed to drive through the courtyard to get to the property.

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She argued that denying her the right to do so meant the house was effectively an enclave. That argument had been accepted by the Lyon court of appeal, which ordered the owner of the courtyard to let the neighbour use it to park a vehicle.

However, the owner successfully argued that the legal reasoning behind a droit de servitude was not to allow ‘a simple comfort’ to the owners of enclave properties.

Rather, the droit de servitude was a means to provide legal access to the public road, and, in this case, that legal access was provided by the footpath.

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The Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court for most civil and criminal cases, agreed and ordered the Lyon court of appeal to reverse its decision, saying it found “no legal reason” for it. 

Decisions by the Cour de Cassation should be taken into account by lower French courts to ensure consistency.

However, under the French legal system, the weight of previous judgments must be balanced against the facts of cases before courts, and so Cour de Cassation decisions are not set in stone for future legal battles.

The judgment can be found here.