[2004] EWCA Civ 760, 10 March 2004. An option agreement between owners of adjacent land, respondent football club (P) and claimant developer (S), defined the purchase price payable by P to buy the land for its new stadium to include a deduction for a public footpath with potential ransom value, which crossed the whole site. Any of the allowance that S had to pay the local authority in this connection should be passed onto P. A £2m purchase price was agreed with an allowance of £1.1m minus X, X being the cost to S for the local authority consent for the crossing. The judge held X to be nil and that £1.1m allowance should be deducted. S appealed on the basis that the £4.25m it paid for the crossing and certain other land (the B land) should be apportioned equally so that X exceeded £1.1m and the allowance was accordingly nil. "Held": appeal allowed. The consent required in the definition of X was wrongly construed to be restricted only to the local authority's consent as highway authority, for which nothing had been paid, as the authority owned the land over which the footpath passed. Common sense suggested that the price payable for the B land and the crossing should be apportioned between both parties in substantially equal shares. X therefore exceeded £1.1m and the allowance was nil. View judgment at www.bailii.org.