The defendants set out to re-construct a wall along the side of the river to protect their land and an adjacent highway from flooding. In doing so they pulled down the wall, leaving gaps which they intended to fill by a new building. The river suddenly rose and the respondents’ land was flooded.
Held: The appellants were not liable either in nuisance or in negligence. Sir Wilfred Greene MR said: ‘If this wall had been erected by the freeholder and taken down by the freeholder the next day, or a week, or a year afterwards, with the result that the flood water took the course which it would have taken if the wall had never been there, I cannot see, on any principle known to me, that the respondents would have been entitled to complain. If it were not so, a person, in putting up a defensive work on his own land, would act at his peril, because by the mere fact of erecting it he would be conferring on his neighbours, or persons in the neighbourhood, rights to insist that he should never remove the wall or building that he had put up.’ He went on to say that ‘the respondents had no right to have the wall erected, they had no right to insist on its continuance, they had no ground of complaint whatsoever against anybody who rightfully took it down.’
Judges:
Sir Wilfred Greene MR
Citations:
[1941] 1 KB 381
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Green v The Right Honourable Lord Somerleyton and others CA 28-Feb-2003
The parties owned areas of marshland divided by a road. The claimant sought a declaration that the defendants had no right to allow floodwater to escape over his land from what he said was an artificial reservoir on the defendant’s land. The . .
Cited – Leakey v The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty CA 31-Jul-1979
Natural causes were responsible for soil collapsing onto neighbouring houses in Bridgwater.
Held: An occupier of land owes a general duty of care to a neighbouring occupier in relation to a hazard occurring on his land, whether such hazard is . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Negligence, Nuisance
Updated: 23 March 2022; Ref: scu.179684