Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather plc
Liability under Rylands v Fletcher and in nuisance requires that the type of damage was reasonably foreseeable.
Facts
Eastern Counties Leather, a tannery, used a chemical solvent, perchloroethene, in its business. Over many years, small spillages of the solvent seeped into the ground beneath the tannery and travelled through the rock to a borehole about 1.3 miles away, from which Cambridge Water extracted water. The water became contaminated, and could no longer be used for drinking under new EU rules. At the time of the spillages, it was not foreseeable that the solvent would cause this kind of damage.
Legal principle
The House of Lords held that the tannery was not liable. Lord Goff said that foreseeability of damage of the relevant type is a prerequisite of liability in damages for nuisance, and also under the rule in Rylands v Fletcher, which he described as an extension of the law of nuisance to isolated escapes. The tannery could not reasonably have foreseen that the spillages would cause the contamination. He also said that the storage of substantial quantities of chemicals on industrial premises was an almost classic case of non natural use.
Related cases on nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher
- Attorney General v PYA Quarries Ltd [1957] 2 QB 169
- Christie v Davey [1893] 1 Ch 316
- Coventry v Lawrence [2014] UKSC 13, [2014] AC 822
- Fearn v Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023] UKSC 4, [2024] AC 1
- Hollywood Silver Fox Farm Ltd v Emmett [1936] 2 KB 468
- Hunter v Canary Wharf Ltd [1997] AC 655
- Kennaway v Thompson [1981] QB 88
- Leakey v National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty [1980] QB 485
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