Una coppia del Surrey ha provato a rivendicare la terra del vicino con uno gnomo da giardino

Sounds about right to me. My mate’s parents live in Guildford, and while they were out of the country on secondment their neighbours painted over their parking space and claimed it as their own.

The age old legal principle: Wherever I lay my gnome, that’s my home.

My understanding from the article is that the gnome people did actually own the land (when they purchased the house from the previous owner who had expressed no interest in the land), but that their now new neighbours had been using the land as their own (maintaining it, planting flowers etc) for a long time – although not long enough to initially claim the land legally through adverse possession.

New people move in, don’t care that someone else has been using “their” land for years and rightly (in their view) reclaim it, gnome and all (although the gnome is a fairly petty move – just talking to the neighbours would possibly have solved the issue).

Even though the “maintainers” hadn’t used the land unopposed for the full legal time required for adverse possession, the courts sided with them on this occasion given the considerable time they *had* used it without objection, and the care they’d exhibited in their use.