Lord Greene MR said: ‘Every person . . has a right to use the highway and, if something happens to him which in fact causes an obstruction to the highway but is in no way referable to his fault, it is quite impossible, in my view, to say that ipso facto and immediately a nuisance is created. It would be obviously created if he allows it to be an obstruction for an unreasonable time or in unreasonable circumstances, but the mere fact that it had become an obstruction cannot turn it into a nuisance . . If that were not so, it seems to me that every driver of a vehicle on a road would be turned into an insurer in respect of latent defects in his own machine.’
Judges:
Lord Greene MR
Citations:
[1944] 1 KB 689
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Dymond v Pearce CA 13-Jan-1972
A motorcyclist crashed into the rear of a lorry stationary on the carriageway. The plaintff said that the parking of the lorry was a nuisance, and that if it had not been so parked, there would have been no accident.
Held: The appeal failed. . .
Cited – Farrel v Mowlem 1954
The defendant had without justification laid a pipe across a pavement and the plaintiff tripped over it and was injured.
Held: The defendant was liable in nuisance. Devlin J said, as to the pipe: ‘No doubt it is a comparatively harmless sort . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Nuisance
Updated: 01 April 2022; Ref: scu.265961
