Hiya,
That’s why my first comment was to take pics of the state of his fence!
Remember, HE didn’t then pull the post or panel out and throw it against your fence, an “act of nature” did.
Consider this analogy: imagine that he had a load of posts and panels delivered last week and they were stacked in his garden ready for him to put up a fence this week. In court, you’d try to argue two points;
1 - that it wasn’t an act of nature (ie ignore that he didn’t physically pick up a panel and throw it at your fence)
2 - but that he failed to take reasonable care to secure his delivery (ie he knew full well a storm was coming, the Met Office had issued red alerts etc and any normal person would have done that (the “reasonable” test))
Now, coming back to the situation, putting up a crappy fence as you described is like failing to secure in the analogy above. A “reasonable” person would dig a proper hole and secure the post in concrete etc.
It becomes a very muddy issue and I think it is going to be difficult to satisfy the first point though (asking a court/adjudicator to set aside the “act of nature” defence) and to consider the matter solely on the second point (“reasonable care”.)
I’m not a lawyer and I’d love a lawyer to tell me that I’m talking bollox! It is more that you have an unneighbourly neighbour and you’re angry/burned at being out of pocket because of him. A bitter pill as it may be to swallow, think hard before throwing good money after bad on a case that would be very hard to win (my personal view) only for the bugger to be able to brag in the pub how you lost.
As it stands, others see him for what he is and if he doesn’t “do the right thing” will see that too. You have the high moral ground, even if the law doesn’t favour the moral position over the technical legal one.
Edit: remove a duplication