Rylands v Fletcher Flashcards
The rule in Rylands v Fletcher
Protects against interference due to an isolated escape from the defendant’s land.
The events in Rylands v Fletcher
- Defendant engaged some independent contractors to construct a reservoir on his land
- when the reservoir filled, water escaped and flooded the claimant’s adjoining mine
- there was no evidence of negligence but the defendant was held to be liable ‘the person who for his own purposes brings on his land and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril and…is prima facie answerable for all the damage that is the natural consequence of the escape.’
- House of Lords introduced the requirement that the defendant’s use should be a non-natural use of his land
Who can sue in Rylands v Fletcher?
Cambridge Water v Eastern Counties: rule in Rylands v Fletcher amounts to no more than an extension of private nuisance
Hunter v Canary Wharf: a claimant in a private nuisance action must have a proprietary interest in the land affected and this is now true for Rylands v Fletcher
Who can be sued in Rylands v Fletcher
The person who brings, collects and keeps the ‘thing’ onto the land (the creator of the nuisance) and/or any person who was control over the land
Loss
- The claimant must suffer some damage
- The rule in Rylands v Fletcher will not allow recovery for personal injury (Transco)
- Only types recoverable under Rylands v Fletcher are therefore property damage and consequential economic loss
Elements of Rylands v Fletcher
(1) The defendant brings onto land and accumulates there;
(2) For his own purposes, anything likely to do mischief if it escapes;
(3) Escape;
(4) Escape caused foreseeable harm;
(5) Non-natural use of land
(1) The defendant brings onto land and accumulates there
- The defendant must have brought something voluntarily onto the land
- Giles v Walker: no liability for the spread of thistles from the defendant’s land as they grew there naturally and had not been brought onto the land
(2) For his own purposes, anything likely to do mischief if it escapes
- may be liability for things that are obviously dangerous but also possible to impose liability for relatively safe things if they can escape in a way that would make them dangerous
- the thing must be capable of causing damage if it escapes
- examples: water, acid, explosives
- potentially wide-ranging term ‘anything likely to do mischief’ has been circumvented as time goes on by the requirement that there should be a non-natural use of the land
- in Transco the House of Lords also held that the thing that escapes has to be reasonably recognised as having an exceptionally high risk of causing danger if it were to escape
(3) Escape
There must be an escape. The escape can be slow and over a period of time (Cambridge Water)
Read v Lyons: the claim failed because the claimant was injured by an explosion on the defendant’s land, so there was no element of escape
Transco: no escape from the claimant’s land. The water leaking from the pipe had moved from one part of the defendant’s land to another.
Stannard v Gore
- must be the substance collected by the defendant that escapes
- the defendant ran a tyre fitting business and brought tyres onto his property. The tyres spread a fire onto the claimant’s property.
- Rylands v Fletcher didn’t apply because it wasn’t the tyres that escaped
- It also failed because the tyres did not have an exceptionally high risk of causing a danger if they were to escape
Colour Quest Ltd v Total Downstream UK
- where fuel is the ‘dangerous thing’ brought onto the defendant’s land and it is the fuel that starts the fire/causes an explosion, the fuel could be seen as escaping with the fire (it is a component of the fire/explosion)
- essentially if the defendant is storing things known to be a fire risk, especially if placed near something likely to cause ignition, the defendant might be liable in Rylands v Fletcher
(4) Escape caused foreseeable harm
Foreseeability of damage in the event of an escape is essential for a claimant to succeed (Cambridge Water)
The defendant need not have foreseen the escape but must have known or ought reasonably to have foreseen that the ‘dangerous thing’ could, if it escaped, cause damage.
Even if the defendant had taken reasonable care to prevent the escape and the damage, the defendant will still be liable.
What has to be foreseen is the damage, not the escape.
In Cambridge Water, a chemical seeped through the concrete floor into the soil below where it travelled to the claimant’s borehole 1.3 miles way. The damage of pollution to this borehole was not reasonably foreseeable damage.
(5) Non-natural use of land
- not the same as avoiding liability on the basis that something occurs naturally. The thing that has been accumulated must also have the quality of being for non-natural use
- Rickards v Lothian: ‘it must be some special use bringing with it increased danger to others and must not merely be the ordinary use of the land or such a use as is proper for the general benefit of the community’. The claimant suffered damage when the defendant’s sink overflowed because a trespasser had blocked it. The court said non-natural use constituted a use of land which posed an increased risk over and above that of a normal use. As the defendant was making ordinary and proper use of the land, there was no liability.
Examples of non-natural use of land
Stannard v Gore: Storing tyres deemed a natural use
Cambridge Water: the storage of substantial quanities of chemicals on industrial premises is an “almost classic case” of non-natural use
Transco: the piping of water for domestic use to the defendant’s block of flats was not a non-natural use. Rylands v Fletcher can only be engaged where the defendant’s use is extraordinary and unusual according to the standards of the day
Colour Quest: the use of the land could be seen as non-natural because of the quantity of oil kept on the premises despite the industrial nature of the defendant’s depot. Quantity/volume is therefore relevant
Defences
The same defences apply as for public nuisance, with the addition of common benefit (a type of consent)
- Common benefit
- Act or default of the claimant
- Statutory authority
- Act of third party
- Act of God
- Contributory negligence
- Consent
