Solicitors may or may not be from Hell, but there will be occasions when, to Hell they must go.
We see this in Star Energy Weald Basin Ltd & Anor v Bocardo SA [2010] UKSC 35 (28 July 2010)
The appellant, had drilled an oil well sideways under the respondent’s land. It had been found, at first instance, that this was a trespass.
The Supreme Court remarked;
“It has been observed that anything that is drilled below a depth of about 8.7 miles or 14 kilometres would be crushed by the earth’s pressure of 50,000 pounds per square inch and vaporised by a temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit:…”
This, the Court found, was no bar to the correctness of the finding that drilling 3 wells at respective depths of 2,900, 2,800 and 950 feet below the respondent’s land was a trespass.