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ARTICLE · 17 FEBRUARY 2021

How squatters rights won a Sydney dunny lane

Stacks Law Firm
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The judge ruled that as he had squatted on the land and used it for more than 12 years, he was entitled to ownership.

AustraliaReal Estate and Construction
Merrill Phillips
Merrill Phillips
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Supreme Court dispute over three square metres of land

It's not often the old Aussie terms "squatters rights" and "dunny" come up in court. However, these terms were quite liberally thrown around in a recent case, where two people were disputing the ownership of a "dunny lane". (See Hardy v Sidoti [2020] NSWSC 1057.)

Located in Redfern, the dunny lane was situated between two properties, belonging respectively to Mr Hardy and Mr Sidoti. This small throughway was once used by carters to pick up buckets of waste from the outdoor toilets (aka dunnies).

The lane at the centre of this Supreme Court dispute measured only 88 centimetres in width and 3.81 metres in length, making a total of 3.35 square metres of land.

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