Conditions for initiating land consolidation
Supreme Court judgment 6 October 2020, HR-2020-1910-A, (case no. 20-040353SIV-HRET), civil case, appeal against judgment.
Laila Skarheim Moen (Counsel Aslak Runde) v. Tone Harvold, Tor Egil Oterholm (Counsel Christian Schadenberg Mathiassen)
Justices: Indreberg, Webster, Bull, Arntzen, Falch
The owners of a farm requested land consolidation in order to acquire an area from the adjacent property for expansion of the operating building, see section 3-2 of the Land Consolidation Act. The Supreme Court found like the Court of Appeal that when assessing the criterion "difficult to use gainfully at the current time and under the current circumstances", one may consider other input factors than owned land, such as leased land. This factor made it, in this case, possible to operate a business larger than what the existing operating building could accommodate.To the question whether it is sufficient for initiating a land consolidation process that land consolidation will give a more gainful solution than what the current property arrangement allows, or whether there is also a threshold for how ungainful the current property must be before land consolidation may commence, the Supreme Court found that a genuine and demonstrable need is required to exploit the property in a manner that is rendered more difficult with the current property arrangement. Such a need had been established in the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal against the Court of Appeal's land consolidation ruling.