Strict and Absolute Liability

In one line

Strict liability makes you pay without fault but lets you escape through seven exceptions, and absolute liability, invented in India, takes the exceptions away.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher imposes liability without proof of negligence on a person who for his own purposes brings on his land and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, and it is subject to recognised exceptions; the Supreme Court of India in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India declined to apply that rule with its exceptions to an enterprise carrying on a hazardous activity, holding instead that such an enterprise owes an absolute and non delegable duty to the community, subject to no exception, and that the compensation must be correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise.

The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher

Facts. Water escaped from a reservoir built on the defendant's land and flooded the plaintiff's mine through disused shafts. Held. In Rylands v. Fletcher, (1868) LR 3 HL 330, the House of Lords held that a person who for his own purposes brings on his land and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes must keep it at his peril, and is answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape. The rule is subject to recognised exceptions. Why it matters here. It is the origin of liability without fault for a hazardous activity, and it is the rule the Supreme Court declined to follow in M.C. Mehta.

Four elements have to be shown.

A dangerous thing, being anything likely to do mischief if it escapes: water, gas, electricity, explosives, fumes, chemicals, sewage, and in decided cases even a flagpole and a fairground swing.

A bringing on to the land. The thing must be brought and kept there by the defendant for his own purposes; what is naturally on the land is outside the rule.

A non natural user of land. Not merely an unusual use, but a special use bringing increased danger to others, and not an ordinary use of the land or a use for the general benefit of the community.

An escape, being movement from a place under the defendant's occupation or control to a place outside it. A person injured on the premises is outside the rule and must sue in negligence or under the occupier's duties.

The exceptions, and why they matter to an insurer

They matter because each of them is a defence the insurer can run, and their existence is exactly what the Supreme Court found unacceptable in an Indian factory.

1. The plaintiff's own default. Where the escape is caused by the claimant's own act, or the damage is due to his own hypersensitivity, the rule does not apply.