The Rule in Rylands and Flecther remains to be one of strict liabilty. Discuss.
“The Rule in Rylands v. Fletcher remains a tort of strict liability.
The statement posed to us above is quite contentious, a statement which attracts diverse views from a number of different jurisdictions. The main question to consider here is whether the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher remains an independent tort of strict liability or whether there has been a move towards negligence and nuisance in recent years. There is a great emphasis placed on the rule of Rylands v. Fletcher for law students, however as noted by Lord Hoffman in Transco v. Stockport; “It is perhaps not surprising that counsel could not find a case since 1939-1945 war in which anyone had succeeded in a claim under the rule. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the intellectual effort devoted to the rule by judges and writers over many years has brought forth a mouse!”1 As mentioned above, a number of common law jurisdictions have diverse views on this issue. I shall discuss each separately throughout my answer.
Firstly, in order to provide a fully comprehensive answer, I will discuss the facts of the case. The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher is a decision of the House of Lords which established a new area of tort law. According to Paul Ward; “it is a land associated tort which is considered to attract strict liability,”2 that is, it imposes liability for harm without having to prove negligence. Ward explicitly lays out that it is a tort that compromises of four elements; of accumulation of a natural thing, which if escapes and causes damage to the plaintiff, the defendant will be strictly liable.3 The case concerned two adjacent landowners, Rylands and Fletcher. The defendant landowners, Rylands and Horrocks engaged with an independent contractor to build a reservoir in order to supply water to their mill. Due to negligence of the contractors and unbeknownst to the defendant landowners, the reservoir was built above a disused mine shaft, which flooded and collapsed causing water to escape
The statement posed to us above is quite contentious, a statement which attracts diverse views from a number of different jurisdictions. The main question to consider here is whether the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher remains an independent tort of strict liability or whether there has been a move towards negligence and nuisance in recent years. There is a great emphasis placed on the rule of Rylands v. Fletcher for law students, however as noted by Lord Hoffman in Transco v. Stockport; “It is perhaps not surprising that counsel could not find a case since 1939-1945 war in which anyone had succeeded in a claim under the rule. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the intellectual effort devoted to the rule by judges and writers over many years has brought forth a mouse!”1 As mentioned above, a number of common law jurisdictions have diverse views on this issue. I shall discuss each separately throughout my answer.
Firstly, in order to provide a fully comprehensive answer, I will discuss the facts of the case. The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher is a decision of the House of Lords which established a new area of tort law. According to Paul Ward; “it is a land associated tort which is considered to attract strict liability,”2 that is, it imposes liability for harm without having to prove negligence. Ward explicitly lays out that it is a tort that compromises of four elements; of accumulation of a natural thing, which if escapes and causes damage to the plaintiff, the defendant will be strictly liable.3 The case concerned two adjacent landowners, Rylands and Fletcher. The defendant landowners, Rylands and Horrocks engaged with an independent contractor to build a reservoir in order to supply water to their mill. Due to negligence of the contractors and unbeknownst to the defendant landowners, the reservoir was built above a disused mine shaft, which flooded and collapsed causing water to escape
Bibliography: Gordon Cameron (2005) ‘Making Sense of Nuisance in Scots Law’ 56(2), accessed March 12 2013 Paul Ward, Tort Law in Ireland (Kluwer Law International BV, The Netherlands, 2010) Peter Cane, ‘The Changing Fortunes of Rylands v. Fletcher’ (1994) 24 WALR 237-46 Professor AWB Simpson, ‘Legal Liability for Bursting Reservoirs: The Historical Context of Rylands v Fletcher’, (1984) 13 JLS 209 at 219 The Honourable Justice Chambers, ‘Negligence, Nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher: The struggle for simplicity continues’ (2000), accessed March 12 2013 Transco plc v