A complaint of trespass and criminal damage filed by a senior embroiled in a land dispute with the St Regis Resort has been dropped by police — on the advice of government lawyers.

Gardene Gibbons, 81, and her late husband, Shirley, filed the complaint in March after two unidentified men drove on to their property and ripped out a series of bollards the couple had placed across their road the previous evening.

The incident was the culmination of a year-long dispute over access rights between the hotel and area residents.

It had escalated after Hotelco, the resort’s owner, erected fences across routes used by residents to access their homes.

The hotel claimed that local residents were disrupting hotel guests playing golf on the resort’s 18-hole Five Forts golf course, which it leased from the Government.

In retaliation, the Gibbonses blocked off a pathway running across their property used by golfers driving carts from the second green to the third tee of the course.

In an e-mail to Mrs Gibbons last Friday, a police officer stated: “Following our brief conversation, I write to inform you that the Bermuda Police Service have received legal guidance on the wilful damage report made by yourself.

“Legal guidance were received from Mr Brain Myrie, the chambers of the Attorney-General, and Victoria Pearman, the office of the Department of Public Prosecution.

“Both have stated that this reported incident is not criminal but civil, and resolution should be obtained through civil means/litigation.

“In particular, it was written, ‘In the present matter where both sides claim to be in possession of land, it is not unlawful for either of them, or any person acting by their authority, to take steps reasonably necessary to defend their possession even against a person who is entitled by law to possession of the property.

“This would include either side using physical force as reasonably necessary in order to defend possession short of doing bodily harm, pursuant to ss264 and 265 of the Criminal Code 1907 (CC).

“Destruction of barriers in the circumstances would not constitute offences of wilful damage or destruction, pursuant to ss447 and 448 of the CC, as the destruction would not be unlawful for the reasons stated above.’

“Based on these legal guidance, the BPS will not be producing a criminal file. The event has been closed.”

The letter was forwarded to Renée Ming, the area MP, and two senior police officers.

Last night Phil Perinchief, the attorney representing Mrs Gibbons, condemned the decision, claiming that, if the interpretations were applied island-wide, they would result in bedlam.

He said: “The truth of the matter is that both sides are not claiming ‘to be in possession of land’. St Regis/Hotelco are in fact and law ‘tenants’, leaseholders under a lease to the Government, the true owners, landlords and title holders of ‘leased land’ not including ‘this strip of land’ the government itself admits it does not own.

“How then in law can St Regis/Hotelco, a leaseholding tenant, make such a claim of ‘possession’?”

He said that the views of the Government’s lawyers were “fatally flawed” from the beginning and founded on mistaken premises.

“As such, they do not represent a true interpretation and application of the law cited. St Regis/Hotelco cannot and are not ‘claiming possession’ of the land it criminally entered upon.

“For adjacent neighbours as an example, including those not making a claim of adverse possession but who nevertheless believe they have a ‘competing claim’ for a specific ‘strip of land’; this conclusion of senior counsel is a prescription for disaster.

“Those laymen neighbours may believe, or conclude, that all they need to do is ‘believe’ they have a competing claim for a given strip of property and that that ‘belief’ permits them to go upon that property and commit wilful damage upon that property.

“This example becomes even more egregious when you consider as is the case here, that St Regis/Hotelco is a leaseholder or tenant and accordingly, in law, cannot lawfully assert any ‘claim of possession’ of this strip of land or indeed land not including this ‘strip’.

“That cannot be the law. This is a criminal matter and not a civil one, which of course, isn’t precluded by any initiation of criminal charges. It is an indefensible ‘stretch’ to conclude otherwise.

“I wholly disagree with senior counsel opinions and conclusions on this matter. It is a well-known fact that the Government is in active negotiations with the Gibbons family as to how best to fairly compensate the Gibbons family for the usage of that very private strip of land the staff of St Regis/Hotelco, under direction, trespassed upon and did wilful damage.”

The Royal Gazette e-mailed questions to the Government yesterday, asking if it had erroneously included Mrs Gibbons’s property in its lease agreement with Hotelco.

The Ministry of Public Works said negotiations between the Government and the Gibbons family were “ongoing” and “at a sensitive stage”, but declined to comment further.