Rylands v. Fletcher (1868): Strict Liability in Tort Law

Case at a Glance

What Is Rylands v. Fletcher?

Rylands v. Fletcher is the 1868 House of Lords decision that established the rule of strict liability in English tort law for the escape of dangerous things accumulated on land. A person who brings onto their land something likely to cause harm if it escapes is liable for all damage caused by that escape — whether or not they acted negligently. The rule does not require proof of fault. It requires only proof that the defendant brought the dangerous thing onto the land, that it escaped, and that damage resulted.

The Facts: A Reservoir, Old Mine Shafts, and Flooding

John Rylands was a mill owner who needed a reliable water supply for his mill's operations. He hired independent contractors to build a reservoir on land adjacent to his mill in Lancashire. The contractors began excavation. In the course of their work, they discovered 5 old, disused mine shafts running vertically beneath the site. These shafts, long abandoned and partly filled with soil and rubble, were connected to a network of horizontal mine passages below. The contractors recognised the shafts but took no steps to properly seal or block them. They completed the reservoir without addressing the shafts.

Rylands did not know about the old shafts. He was not told of their existence by the contractors. When the reservoir was filled with water, the weight and pressure of the water forced through the improperly sealed shafts, travelled through the underground passages, and burst into Thomas Fletcher's operational coal mines beneath the adjacent land. Fletcher's mines flooded and he suffered significant financial loss.

Fletcher sued Rylands for the damage. The legal difficulty was immediate: Rylands had not been negligent. He had hired competent contractors and had no personal knowledge of the mine shafts. The negligence was the contractors', not his. Under traditional tort law principles requiring proof of fault, Rylands should arguably not have been liable.

The Proceedings: 3 Levels of Court

Court of Exchequer: No Liability

The Court of Exchequer, the court of first instance, initially held that Rylands was not liable to Fletcher. Because Rylands had not been personally negligent — the fault lay with the independent contractors — no cause of action in negligence was established.

Court of Exchequer Chamber: Strict Liability Established

Fletcher appealed to the Court of Exchequer Chamber, where 6 judges unanimously reversed the Exchequer decision. Justice Blackburn, speaking for the court, articulated what became the famous rule: We think that the true rule of law is, that the person who, for his own purposes, brings on his land and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril; and if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape.

This was a significant departure from the conventional requirement of fault. Blackburn's rule did not ask whether Rylands was careless. It asked only whether Rylands had brought something dangerous onto his land and whether that thing had escaped and caused damage. If yes, liability followed automatically. The obligation to keep it in was absolute.

House of Lords: Non-Natural Use Added

Rylands appealed to the House of Lords. On July 17, 1868, the House of Lords unanimously affirmed the Exchequer Chamber's decision. Lord Cairns, the Lord Chancellor, delivered the leading judgment. He agreed with Blackburn's formulation but added an important qualification: the strict liability rule applied only where the defendant had made a non-natural use of his land.

The distinction Lord Cairns drew was between natural and non-natural uses of land. Natural use included things that occurred on land in the ordinary course of nature, or activities that were part of the ordinary and proper use of the land given its location and character. Non-natural use referred to bringing onto the land something special — something not naturally there and not part of ordinary land use — that introduced a particular risk of harm to neighbours. A reservoir built on land in a coal-mining district, accumulated for the defendant's own purposes, was a non-natural use. The strict liability rule applied.

The 4 Elements of the Rylands Rule

For a claimant to succeed under the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher, they must establish 4 things:

• The defendant brought and accumulated something on their land (the accumulation requirement — the rule does not apply to naturally occurring hazards)
• The thing accumulated was of a kind likely to cause harm or mischief if it escaped (the dangerous character requirement)
• The defendant made a non-natural use of their land (Lord Cairns's limiting principle)
• The thing escaped and caused damage to the claimant (the escape and damage requirement)

Recognised Defences

The courts have recognised 5 main defences to a Rylands v. Fletcher claim:

• Act of God: an unforeseeable natural event of extraordinary violence (e.g., extraordinary rainfall causing a reservoir to overflow)
• Act of a stranger: the escape was caused by the unforeseeable independent act of a third party not under the defendant's control
• Act of the claimant: the claimant's own conduct caused or contributed to the escape
• Statutory authority: the accumulation was expressly authorised by legislation
• Consent: the claimant consented to the accumulation of the dangerous thing on the defendant's land

What Counts as Non-Natural Use?

The concept of non-natural use has been debated and refined in subsequent cases. Cambridge Water Co. v. Eastern Counties Leather plc (1994), a House of Lords decision, reaffirmed the Rylands rule as a specific form of nuisance and held that foreseeability of the type of harm is required — but added that the storage of substantial quantities of chemicals on industrial premises should be regarded as a non-natural use. Transco plc v. Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (2003), another House of Lords decision, held that the bar for non-natural use should be set high: activities that are ordinary or commonplace in a modern industrial society will not qualify, even if they carry some risk. In Transco, a pipe carrying water to a block of flats was held to be an ordinary use of land despite causing flooding when it burst.

The non-natural use concept thus requires something extraordinary or special — not every use of land involving water, gas, fire, or chemicals, but an exceptional accumulation that creates unusual risks beyond the ordinary incidents of land use in the relevant community.

Rylands v. Fletcher in Modern Law

The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher survives as a distinct head of tortious liability in English law, though its practical scope has narrowed significantly since 1868. The expansion of negligence law following Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932), the increasing availability of statutory compensation schemes, and the courts' restrictive approach to non-natural use have reduced the number of cases in which the Rylands rule provides a remedy unavailable under negligence or nuisance.

In the United States, the reception of the Rylands rule has been uneven. Some states accepted it; others expressly rejected it, particularly in the mid-20th century, preferring to address all such claims through negligence or nuisance. The American Law Institute's Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 519, adopts a version of the principle under the label abnormally dangerous activities, applying strict liability to activities that create a high degree of risk of harm that cannot be eliminated by the exercise of reasonable care and that are not common usage in the community.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher?

A person who, for their own purposes, brings onto their land and accumulates there anything likely to cause harm if it escapes, must keep it at their peril. If it escapes and causes damage, they are strictly liable for that damage — whether or not they were negligent. Lord Cairns added that this rule applies only to non-natural use of land.

What is strict liability in Rylands v. Fletcher?

Strict liability means liability without fault. Under the Rylands rule, the defendant is liable for the damage caused by the escape of the accumulated thing even if they exercised all reasonable care. The claimant does not need to prove the defendant was negligent or careless.

What is non-natural use of land?

Non-natural use of land is a use that is unusual, special, or extraordinary — one that introduces a particular hazard beyond what would ordinarily be associated with the land given its character and location. Rylands's reservoir in a coal-mining district was held to be non-natural. Running ordinary household water pipes is not non-natural use.

Timeline

Rylands v. Fletcher confronted the industrial age's uncomfortable truth that profit-driven accumulations of dangerous things on private land create risks that neighbour and law must both reckon with — and that when those risks materialise, fault is not always the right principle by which to allocate the loss.