What is meant by a Rylands v Fletcher claim?
A Rylands v Fletcher claim is a claim brought by the occupier of one property, against the owner of a neighbouring property, for damage caused by something which has escaped from the neighbouring property and damaged the claimant’s land.
Its beauty is its simplicity. First, the claimant does not to prove negligence. Second, the claimant does not need to own the land that has suffered damage. Third, unlike a claim in nuisance, the type of damage the claimant suffers is not restricted to property damage.
Example: Alf and Bert have adjoining businesses. Alf runs ‘Greengages’, a garden centre on land he has under a business tenancy. Bert runs ‘Spoiledoil’, an oil recycling centre on the half acre plot next door which contains an old outdoors swimming pool. Bert uses the pool to store oil. There is a thunderstorm (a ‘1 in 100 years event’), the pool fills and overtops sending a slurry of oil and water over the land and into Greengages nursery killing most of the plants.
By suing in Rylands v Fletcher, rather than nuisance, Alf does not have to worry about proving negligence. What does Alf have to prove to win?
- That Bert is the owner of the land on which Spoiloil is situated.
- That Bert brought the oil onto his land.
- That storing oil for re-cycling was a ‘non-natural’ use of Bert’s land.
- That some of the oil escaped and passed into Alf’s nursery.
- That the escape caused damage.
Bert’s Defence
Bert will argue that he did all he could; keeping old oil in the pool was not negligent; the pool had never overtopped before; the storm was a freak of nature – in short that there is no element of negligence or ‘fault’ on his part. Hence, he will argue, since Alf coud not succeed in negligence or nuisance, he ought not to be allowed to succeed in Rylands v Fletcher.
But Bert will lose.
In Rylands v Fletcher, Rylands stored water in his reservoir which percolated through old mine shafts beneath it and into Fletcher’s working mine shaft. The court held: “ a person who for his own purposes brings on his land and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes must keep it at his peril, and, if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape.”
And it remains the law. In Transco v Stockport MBC [2003] UKHL 61, the House of Lords restated the rule emphasizing: (a) that liability was not contingent on negligence; (b) that a single act was sufficient; (c) that non-natural user was the test (not ‘unreasonable user’).
So, Rylands remains a useful weapon in a world where more and more technical (and hence potentially dangerous) operations are carried out on land, and where having a strict liability imposed on the operator is a useful control mechanism.
Further, it has not been lost on the courts that if (in the type of case where the damage-causing operation is a highly technical one) there was imposed a requirement of negligence, the defendant in such a case would be in a very powerful position.
See Colour Quest v Total Downstream [2009 EWHC 540] where petrol vapour on D’s storage site escaped and exploded damaging C’s neighbouring land.
If your land has been affected by a ‘one-off’ episode of damage emanating from a neighbouring property, take legal advice.
