“House of Lords requires foreseeability for nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher liability”
The House of Lords held that foreseeability of harm is a prerequisite for both nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher liability. Eastern Counties Leather was not liable as the contamination was not reasonably foreseeable at the time of the spillages.
Eastern Counties Leather used organochlorines in their tanning process, with regular spillages occurring over many years. These chemicals seeped through the ground and contaminated Cambridge Water Company's borehole over a mile away, making the water unfit for human consumption under new EU standards.
Whether liability in nuisance and under the rule in Rylands v Fletcher requires foreseeability of the type of harm that actually occurred.
Lord Goff held that foreseeability should be a requirement for both nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher to align these torts with general negligence principles and prevent unlimited liability. The rule in Rylands v Fletcher was recharacterized as a subset of nuisance rather than a truly independent strict liability tort.
This landmark decision fundamentally altered the law of nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher by introducing foreseeability requirements, reducing the scope of strict liability and harmonizing tort law principles.
Liability under both Rylands v Fletcher and nuisance requires that the damage was reasonably foreseeable at the time of the defendant's conduct, applying contemporary knowledge standards.
The House of Lords held the defendants were not liable because the groundwater contamination was not reasonably foreseeable when the chemical spillages occurred in the 1970s-80s.
It introduced foreseeability requirements to environmental torts and established how courts should judge historical pollution by the standards of knowledge available at the time, not current environmental awareness.
Lord Goff suggested that statutory regulation might be more appropriate than common law for addressing environmental pollution, given the complexity of modern environmental issues.
OSCOLA Citation
Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994] 2 AC 264 (HL)
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[2026] EWHC 1095 (KB)
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