Court rejects man’s claim to land

For six years, Lucas Knol has been fighting for what he says is his share of a Porter Creek property left behind by deceased prospector Harry Versluce.

For six years, Lucas Knol has been fighting for what he says is his share of a Porter Creek property left behind by deceased prospector Harry Versluce.

But in a decision made last month and released this week, a panel of three B.C./Yukon Court of Appeal justices dismissed his most recent, and likely final, attempt to lay claim to a portion of Versluce’s estate.

Versluce had permitted Knol to live in an abandoned trailer on his property since 1984.

Knol, also a prospector, would stay in the trailer for days or weeks at a time between trips to Dawson City, where he held a number of claims, and journeys south to Vancouver and beyond.

Versluce died of cancer in 2002, at the age of 92.

Shortly after his death, the executrix and principal heir of his will, Genevieve Piper, told Knol to remove his belongings from the property, as it was to be subdivided and sold.

Knol removed some but not all of the things from the trailer. In the meantime, he claimed he and Versluce had a written agreement that Knol would have first claim to the property if and when it was put on the market.

The matter went to court and Knol produced a handwritten contract between the two men which gave Knol permission to live on the property and first purchase rights should the land be put up for sale.

Piper produced a similar document that had the word “Void” written across it three times.

During the course of the trial, no one could explain why or when Versluce would have voided the contract, but several witnesses testified that the word was written in Versluce’s hand.

In February 2007, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower found that Knol had no claim on the property.

In his decision, Gower wrote that Knol’s testimony was lacking in credibility because it was “at times inconsistent, argumentative, evasive and peppered with prevarication.”

He went on to declare the contract invalid because of its vagueness.

The agreement gave Knol permission to live in the trailer and on the “lands immediately adjoining the said trailer.”

But because there was no scale of land area specified on the accompanying map, Gower decided the contract was “unenforceable by reason of uncertainty.”

Knol then took his case to the Court of Appeal, but failed to produce the necessary documents within a year of filing, so his case was put on the inactive list.

Six months later, he still had not filed the documents, and his case was declared abandoned and dismissed by Judge David Frankel.

His latest appeal was of that dismissal, but once again, the chips have fallen against the 52-year-old Dutchman.

At a hearing held in Vancouver, the three Court of Appeal judges upheld Frankel’s decision. They found no error or misunderstanding in Frankel’s decision, and put the responsibility firmly on Knol’s shoulders.