Tort Law

Cambridge Water Co. Ltd. v. Eastern Counties Leather plc

[1994] 2 AC 264

Facts

• Eastern Counties Leather operated a tannery.
• The tannery used a chemical solvent known as perchloroethene, or PCE, in its leather-making process.
• Small quantities of PCE were regularly spilled onto the factory floor.
• The solvent passed through the floor and entered the soil.
• Over time, it travelled through the underground chalk aquifer.
• Cambridge Water Company later acquired and operated a borehole approximately 1.3 miles away.
• In 1983, testing revealed PCE contamination beyond the level permitted for drinking water.
• The borehole could no longer be used for public supply without expensive treatment.
• Cambridge Water sought more than £1 million in damages.
• It relied upon nuisance and Rylands v. Fletcher.
• When the spillages occurred, the scientific risk that small amounts of PCE could travel such a distance through groundwater was not reasonably known.

• Whether reasonable foreseeability of the type of damage is required under Rylands.
• Whether the tannery’s use and storage of PCE constituted non-natural use.
• Whether unforeseeable groundwater contamination was too remote.

• Liability under Rylands requires reasonable foreseeability of the relevant type of damage.
• The foreseeability principle governing remoteness in nuisance also applies to Rylands.
• The defendant need not foresee:
o the exact route of escape;
o the precise extent of damage; or
o every scientific detail.
• However, the general kind of harm must reasonably have been foreseeable when the defendant acted.
• Storage or use of substantial quantities of hazardous industrial chemicals may constitute non-natural use.
• Strict liability removes the need to prove negligence but does not eliminate all limits relating to remoteness and foreseeability.

• PCE was a potentially dangerous industrial chemical.
• Its substantial use and storage at the tannery could be regarded as non-natural.
• The solvent escaped from the tannery and reached the claimant’s water source.
• Nevertheless, the critical question was whether that kind of long-distance groundwater contamination was foreseeable during the period of the spills.
• The evidence showed that knowledge of PCE’s ability to pass through concrete, soil and chalk over a long period was not reasonably available at the time.
• A reasonable tannery operator would not then have anticipated that small floor spillages could contaminate a borehole 1.3 miles away.
• The later introduction of stricter water-quality standards could not retrospectively make the earlier consequence foreseeable.
• Rylands was strict as to fault, but the House of Lords refused to make it unlimited insurance against scientifically unknown damage.
• Because the relevant type of harm was unforeseeable, the loss was too remote.

• The House of Lords dismissed Cambridge Water’s claim.
• The use of PCE was capable of being non-natural, and an escape had occurred.
• However, contamination of a distant groundwater source was not reasonably foreseeable at the material time.
• Foreseeability of the type of damage was confirmed as an essential element of Rylands liability.