A fire which started with an electrical short circuit, went on to set fire to some wood and in due course to a stack of paper.
Held: Section 86 of the 1774 Act applied to excuse the defendant. Lord Goddard said: ‘In my opinion it was a short circuit that set fire to the wood in the neighbourhood of the ventilator and that in turn set fire to the stack of paper. Pausing here, it does not appear that this paper ever burnt freely; no doubt it caused a lot of smoke, and I accept the evidence that there was some flame seen, but it was not that stack apparently that caused the sudden sheet of flame which caused the real damage here. The cause of that is obscure; the only explanation was that offered by the fire officers, that the heating of the paint and varnish caused an accumulation of gas which suddenly ignited and rushed upwards. However, I do not propose to deal further with this because I cannot hold that placing packing paper and cardboard cartons in this recess behind the balustrade was negligent. Business of the sort carried on by the first defendants necessitates having a stack of packing and wrapping material at hand. This material is not highly inflammable like loose tissue paper or shavings would be. It is common knowledge that it takes a good deal to get closely packed thick paper well alight, though it will smoulder. But in any case I cannot see how it can be negligent to store this paper in what was a convenient recess any more than it would be to store it in one of the rooms occupied by the first defendants. They had no reason to suppose that there was likely to be a short circuit which would fire the panelling in the immediate neighbourhood of the stack, which I may mention was never burnt through. On the evidence before me I am not prepared to find that the fire was caused by the negligence of any of the defendants, and I hold that it was accidental and need only refer on this matter to Collingwood v Home and Colonial Stores Ltd.’
Judges:
Lord Goddard
Citations:
[1954] 1 QB 565
Statutes:
Fires Prevention (Metropolis) Act 1774 86
Negligence, Torts – Other
Updated: 04 May 2022; Ref: scu.512185
