A British farmer used his tractor to flip a car blocking his driveway into the main road running past the property and landed himself in court as a result.
But Robert Hooper, 57, beat charges of dangerous driving and criminal damage after telling the jury that “an Englishman’s home is his castle, and my castle starts at that front gate.”
Using a 400-year old legal precedent known as Semayne’s case that says everyone has the right to defend their home, Hooper was able to fend off prosecution charges, despite dramatic video evidence showing him destroying the Vauxhall (Opel) Corsa and accidentally striking the beer-fulled Corsa passenger, Charlie Burns, with the tractor’s lifting rails.
The incident began with Burns consuming seven bottles of beer at a pub in the north-east of England on an August day last year. As an indication of the kind of effect those beers had on Burns, The Guardian reports that he was planning to walk an incredible 52 miles home when he came across his friend, Elliott Johnson, whose Corsa had suffered a double puncture, so was parked in the farmer’s lane.
Hooper claims that Burns became aggressive when he politely asked the pair to move the car because it was blocking access to the farm. Twenty-one-year old Burns then punched Hooper twice, splitting his lip, leading him to tell the Corsa’s occupants that they needed to move the car immediately, or he’d move it for them.
Which is exactly what happened. The video shows Hooper pushing the stricken Corsa forward towards the road with his tractor, while Burns attempts to kick the side of farm machine. Then Hooper raises the tractors forks, lifting the back end of the Corsa off the ground, before flipping it onto its side and then pushing it out onto the public highway, leaving it turned turtle. At this point Elliot appears try to reach Hooper through the cab, and as Hooper spins the tractor around to return to his farm, catches Elliot with the lifting rails and knocks him to the ground.
We’re not sure who paid for damages to the Corsa, but Hooper was cleared of dangerous driving and criminal damage at Durham crown court, and following the publicity can probably rest easy that he won’t have any more problems with people blocking his driveway.