nuisance notes

Public nuisance

Definition: an act or an omission that;

endangers life, health, property, or comfort of the public;

obstructs the public in exercise or enjoyment of rights common to all citizens;

Materially effects the reasonable comfort & convenience of the life of a class of his majesties subjects

  • Magistrates Courts Act 1980 - public nuisance is a triable either way offence

Elements

  • Cambridge Water v Eastern Counties Leather - there is no requirement of intention or recklessness, the fault element is one of foreseeability of the risk of the type of nuisance

  • Class of people

Attorney General v PYA Quarries - Romer LJ: if a ‘representative cross-section’ of the class had been injuriously affected, then the nuisance was a public one

R v Rimmington - Rodger LJ: a public nuisance is one that ‘affects the community as a whole, rather than merely individuals’

E.g. R v Lloyd - noise affecting only 3 houses was not a public nuisance, but a quarrying operation affecting thirty households in Attorney General v PYA Quarries was

~ Local communities - R v Ruffel - an acid house party attended by thousands blocked roads, had 12 hours of loud music, & polluted the woodlands - guilty

~ Group with a common interest - R v Ong - planed to interfere with the floodlights during a football match - pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a public nuisance

~ Impact on the community - R v Lowrie - Hoax calls to emergency services repeatedly interferes with safety & places people in danger or discomfort - guilty

~ Separate people - R v Johnson - made obscene phone calls to a number of women in a geographic area

Held: made separately - not a class of people

  • Suffer a common harm

The nuisance must affect a right, protection, or benefit enjoyed in common by the members of the affected class

~ The public right to use the River Thames was affected in Tate & Lyle Industries v GLC

~ R v Rimmington - D sent 538 packages to separate members of the public, each containing racially offensive material

Held: this was not a public nuisance as it did not affect a public right

  • Claimant suffered special damage

Tate & Lyle Industries v GLC - affected all users of the river, but C had to pay for the dredging meaning they suffered special damage over & above the other users

Defences

  • Prescription is not available - Harvey v Truro RDC

  • Statutory authority is not available - Attorney General v Burridge

Civil actions

  • Relator action - brought by the Attorney General on behalf of a private citizen

this is rare because statutory bodies usually bring action against public nuisance and AG’s are unlikely to agree unless theres special damage (if so a citizen can simply bring action themselves)

  • Local authority - under the Local Governments Act 1972

  • Private citizen

Private nuisance

Definition: unlawful interference with a person’s use or enjoyment of land

  • Types of private nuisance:

  1. Encroachment on a neighbours land

  2. Direct physical injury to land

  3. Interference with quiet enjoyment

Elements

  • Interest in the land

Having ownership of right over the land - owners, leaseholders, tenants

Visitors & family do not

~ Hunter v Canary Wharf - ‘the law does not always afford a remedy for every annoyance’

~ Hunter & Others v London Docklands co - only those with a right to land could commence an action

  • Unreasonable use of the land which is the source of the nuisance

~ Interference with the land - Malone v Laskey

Five factors taken into account:

  1. Sensitivity of the claimant

Robinson v Kilvert - rising heat from the cellar damaged his special brown paper

Held: cannot complain when doing an exceptionally delicate trade

  1. Duration of the nuisance

Halsey v Esso Petroleum co - noise at night, liable

  1. Character of the area

Sturges v Bridman - moved to the nuisance, liable

Miller v Jackson - bound by Sturges, liable

Wheeler v Saunders - even though he was granted planning permission, he changed the characteristics of the land, liable

  1. Reasonable foreseeability

Cambridge Water co v Eastern Counties Leather - there is no requirement of intention or recklessness, the fault element is one of foreseeability of the risk of the type of nuisance

  1. Malice

Hollywood Silver Fox Farm v Emmett - D caused his son to fire a shotgun to disturb the fox’s breading season intentionally, liable

  • Claimant must suffer some harm

Defences

  • Consent

~ Peters v Prince of Wales Theatre - D’s sprinkler system caused flood damage to C’s land due to icy weather

Held: C consented to the use of the sprinklers & benefitted from them, not liable

  • Vis major

Act of god/nature

~ Nichols v Marsland - ornamental pools overflowed due to heavy, unpredicted rainfall which damaged C’s land

Held: not foreseeable, not liable

  • Act of a stranger

~ Perry v Kendrick’s Transport - 2 boys threw a lit match into the petrol of an old coach (D’s) causing an explosion leaving C with severe burns

Held: not liable as the damage was caused by the unforeseeable actions of a third party

  • Statutory authority

~ Charing Cross Electric Supply co v Hydraulic Power co - water main burst causing damage to property

Held: statute granted permission to keep their water main pressure at high pressure but there was no obligation to do so

  • Contributory negligence

s1 Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 - able to reduce damages payable to C if they partially contributed to their own injuries rather than dismissing their claim entirely

Liability

  • Occupier - if they bear some personal responsibility for it, created by a stranger, act of nature, or previous occupier if they knew or ought to have known

  • Landlords - authorities a tenant to commit a nuisance, there is no agreement between the landlord and the tenant, knew or ought to have known the nuisance would occur

Rylands v Fletcher

Reservoir burst & flooded into a neighbouring mine

m ‘ The person who for this own purposes brings on his land & collects & keeps anything likely to cause mischief must keep it in their peril or they are accountable for any damage’

Strict liability offence

Rules

  • Something must’ve been collected & kept

Includes artificial accumulation of material, but not a natural accumulation such as a lake

~ natural accumulation - Giles v Walker

~ Miles v Forest Granite - blasted rocks that escaped & injured C

Held: while the rocks were not brought onto the land, D brought explosives onto his land which cased the rocks to fly out

  • Nonnatural use

‘Not commonplace’, as opposed to artificial or man-made

Must be unordinary

~ Rickards v Lothian - water supplied to a building was an ordinary & reasonable use of the land

It must be some special use bringing with it increased danger to others & must not merely be the ordinary use of the land

~ Transco - nonnatural use was rephrased as ‘extraordinary & unusual” use

  • Likely to do mischief if it escapes

The escape itself does not need to be likely, only the mischief that would occur as a result of an escape

~ Transco Plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council - water pipe burst, flooding an embankment

Held: D must have done something which gives rise to an exceptionally high risk of danger should there be an escape, however unlikely that prospect was

~ Escape - Read v Lyons & co - injured at D’s factory when a high explosive shell exploded

Held: as she was on the premises at the time, there had been no escape

  • Reasonably foreseeable damage

Introduced in Cambridge Water v Eastern Counties Leather

Defences

(Same as private nuisance!!)

  • Consent

~ Peters v Prince of Wales Theatre - D’s sprinkler system caused flood damage to C’s land due to icy weather

Held: C consented to the use of the sprinklers & benefitted from them, not liable

  • Vis major

Act of god/nature

~ Nichols v Marsland - ornamental pools overflowed due to heavy, unpredicted rainfall which damaged C’s land

Held: not foreseeable, not liable

  • Act of a stranger

~ Perry v Kendrick’s Transport - 2 boys threw a lit match into the petrol of an old coach (D’s) causing an explosion leaving C with severe burns

Held: not liable as the damage was caused by the unforeseeable actions of a third party

  • Statutory authority

~ Charing Cross Electric Supply co v Hydraulic Power co - water main burst causing damage to property

Held: statute granted permission to keep their water main pressure at high pressure but there was no obligation to do so

  • Contributory negligence

s1 Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 - able to reduce damages payable to C if they partially contributed to their own injuries rather than dismissing their claim entirely

Evaluation

  • Strict liability - claimant doesn’t have to prove D is at fault which makes R v F easier than bringing a claim in negligence

But, the fact D is allowed to use various defences means its harder for C to bring a claim, & R v F action isn’t really a strict liability tort

  • unnatural use - hard to prove as D can simply show a natural use for the land & defeat the claim

  • Read v Lyons - personal injury is not actionable when the thing didn’t actually escape the land

  • Australian High court made R v F a part of negligence in 1994

  • Parlt, created statute to replace R v F - Reservoirs Act 1975, Nuclear Installations Act 1965 & 69

  • House of Lords reviewed Transco - could’ve abolished the rule but said it’s been in existence for 150 & Parlt should get rid of it, not the courts

Instead they ruled ‘natural’ use should now be interpreted as ‘ordinary’, meaning R v F will only apply if the use is extraordinary & unusual