Isolated escape: Rylands v Fletcher rule Flashcards
What is the Rylands v Fletcher rule?
Protects against interference due to an isolated escape from the defendant’s land. Requirement is that use of land should be NON-NATURAL.
Rylands v Fletcher acts?
D engaged independent contractors to construct a reservoir on his land in order to supply water for his mill. They failed to block off a number of disused mineshafts and, as a result, when the reservoir was filled, water escaped and flooded the claimant’s adjoining mine. No evidence of negligence BUT Blackburn J held him to be liable:
“We think that the true rule of law is that the person who […] brings on his land […] anything likely to do mischief [he] is prima facie answerable for all the damage that is the natural consequence of the escape.”
What are the Rylands v Fletcher preliminaries?
- Who can sue in Rylands v Fletcher?
- Who can be sued in Rylands v Fletcher?
- Loss
- Who can sue in Rylands v Fletcher?
Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather Plc [1994]: extension of private nuisance. C must have a proprietary interest in the land affected.
- 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 has control over the land (owner/occupier).
- Loss
The claimant must suffer some damage.
Will not allow recovery for personal injury.
The only types of loss recoverable: property damage and consequential economic loss.
What are the 5 elements of Rylands v Fletcher?
- The defendant brings onto land and accumulates there;
- For their own purposes, anything likely to do mischief if it escapes;
- Escape;
- Escape caused foreseeable harm; and
- Non-natural use of land.
- The defendant brings onto land and accumulates there; concept and case?
The defendant must have voluntarily brought something onto the land.
Giles v Walker (1890) no liability for the spread of thistles.
- For their own purposes, anything likely to do mischief if it escapes; concept and case?
The ‘thing’ brought onto the land must be capable of causing damage (and therefore be dangerous) if it escapes.
Examples?
• Water (Rylands v Fletcher).
• Acid (Rainham Chemical Works v Belvedere Fish Guano [1921]).
• Explosives (Read v Lyons [1946]).
The potentially wide-ranging effect of the term ‘anything likely to do mischief’ has been circumvented.
The thing that escapes has to be reasonably recognised as having an EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH RISK of causing a danger if it were to escape.
- Escape; concept and case?
Must be an escape. Can be slow and over time.
N KEY CASE: Stannard v Gore [2012]: tyre fitting business: tire onto property. Fire - tyres spread to C’s property.
Rule did not apply - tyres did not escape…
(tyres also did not have exceptionally high risk of causing a danger if they were to escape).
Note: Colour Quest Ltd v Total Downstream UK Plc [2010]: fuel can be seen as ‘escaping with the fire’.
- Escape caused foreseeable harm; concept and case?
Foreseeability of damage in the event of an escape is essential for a claimant to succeed. Even if the defendant has taken reasonable care to prevent the escape and the damage, the defendant will still be liable if they fulfil the requirements for operation of the rule. What has to be foreseen is the damage, not the escape.
N Key case: Cambridge Water Co. v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994]: leather manufacturing business D: chemical seeped through floor, travlled to C’s borehole 1.3 miles away - polluted water. Claim FAILED: pollution to water in a borehole 1.3 miles away (and the subsequent closure of the borehole) was not reasonably foreseeable.
- Non-natural use of land; concept and case?
‘Non-natural use’ of the land by the defendant is not the same as avoiding liability on the basis that the thing occurs naturally. Rather it means that the thing that has been accumulated must have the additional quality of being for non-natural use.
Rickards v Lothian [1913]: C suffered damage from D overflowed sink: this failed - not non-natural use.
Perhaps more helpful to define this element as ‘non-ordinary use’:
- Musgrove v Pandelis [1919]: storing a car with a full tank of petrol in a garage - non-natural use of land.
- Stannard v Gore the storing of 3000 tyres on land was deemed natural
- Cambridge Water: storing substantial quantities of chemicals in a factory on an industrial estate - ‘almost classic case’ - of non-natural.
The courts interpret non-natural very widely so as to allow themselves flexibility.
Defences for the Rylands v Fletcher rule?
- Common benefit
- Act or default of the claimant
- Statutory authority
- Act of third party
- Act of God
- Contributory negligence
- Consent
- Common benefit: concept and case?
If the claimant has agreed to the accumulation of the material by the defendant, there will be no liability under the rule.
Peters v Prince of Wales Theatre [1943]: C leased shop next to theatre - shop flooded from sprinkler system. D not liable - sprinkler system common benefit.
- Act or default of the claimant: concept and case?
If the escape has been caused wholly by the claimant’s actions, then he will be unable to complain, as in Dunn v Birmingham Canal Co (1872) - C dug under the defendant’s canal and caused it to flood his land.
