The Court of Appeal declares null the Lands Authority's appeal against an award of compensation and damages for expropriated land in Fgura: article 74(2) of the Government Lands Act allows twenty days from the Board's decision, the term is peremptory, and the merits go unexamined.
The Court of Appeal confirms the dissolution of a 1960 perpetual emphyteusis at Għajn Tuffieħa granted to extend a hotel that then closed: the condition to keep the hotel open was an express resolutive clause with an element of property, and redemption of the ground rent in 2008 did not erase it.
A factory builder evicted after the emphyteusis over Government industrial land was dissolved asked the Board to bind Indis Malta Ltd to his lease from the former emphyteuta under article 1530. With no lease between the parties, the Board declines jurisdiction and refers the case to the Gozo court.
The First Hall refuses to revoke a decree ordering the judicial sale of a flat bought at an earlier auction, holding that the creditor met every term in article 356 of Chapter 12 counted from filing, but suspends the sale while the possessor's action to annul the debt deed is pending.
The Court of Appeal orders a flat owner to close windows and a balcony over the yards below and remove compressors and pipes: no consent in a public deed, no thirty years, a standard servitudes clause is no title, and article 2140's ten-year prescription cannot found a servitude.
After a retrial, the Court of Appeal holds that a son-in-law who received property by simulated sale owes no collation, because he is neither descendant nor heir and article 920 deems gifts to an heir's spouse exempt, while the daughter must collate her own share.
The Court of Appeal holds that article 156 of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure does not govern a sworn application under article 16A of Chapter 69: the Rent Regulation Board runs on its own special procedure, and a landlord who files no witness list keeps his evidence.
The Court of Appeal holds that a continuous and apparent servitude can be created by the owner of the dominant tenement, never by its tenant, so windows and pipes installed by lessees over a neighbour's airspace must go however long they have been there.
The Court of Appeal declares null an appeal filed thirty-one days after a Rent Regulation Board judgment: article 24(2) of Chapter 69 gives twenty days, the term is peremptory, and it cannot be extended even by agreement between the parties.
The Court of Appeal held that a reserved portion paid in money is valued close to judgment, not at the parents' deaths, raising two siblings' awards from about €1,000 each to over €155,000 in a case filed in 1965. It matters to every claim for the leġittima.
The First Hall of the Civil Court held that heirs who rely on a will's statement that a son already took more than his share must prove the benefit, and ordered them to pay him his reserved portion. It matters to anyone drafting or contesting such a clause.
The Court of Appeal dismissed a neighbour's appeal over a dividing wall, pipes and a pavement. It held that only a co-owner may raise a common wall, and that the presumption of a common wall gives way to proof.