Occupiers' Liability Act 1957
"Visitor"
The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 regulates occupiers' liability to visitors. S 1(2) of the Act defines “visitors” as persons to whom the occupier gives (or is to be treated as giving) an invitation or permission to enter or use the premises. In other words, visitors are persons who have the express or implied permission of the occupier to be on the premises. A visitor who exceeds the occupier's permission, e.g. by going to the part of the premises where he was told by the occupier not to go, or by outstaying his leave, will become a trespasser and will fall outside the sphere of application of the Act. He will then be in the sphere of application of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984, with lower standards of protection.
"Visitors" for the purposes of the Act are also “persons who enter premises for any purpose in the exercise of a right ... whether they in fact have [the occupier's] permission or not.” Police carrying out a lawful search, or firefighters in the exercise of their duties will fall into this category.
"Premises"
S 1(3) of the Act defines premises as “fixed or movable structures, including any vessel, vehicle or aircraft.” Nevertheless, occupiers of vehicles are rarely sued by passengers under the Occupiers’ Liability Act, usually relying on Common Law Negligence.
Scope of duty
The Occupier's Liability Act 1957 imposes upon the occupier a duty of care. The occupier must "take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited or permitted by the occupier to be there". [2] The standard of care an occupier is expected to meet is the standard of "a reasonable occupier", no different from the usual common law negligence standard of care. Under Australian Law the Scope and content of a duty of care depends on 6 main factors. [3] (1) magnitude of the risk as perceived by the reasonable occupier; (2) degree of probability of its occurrence; (3) expense, difficulty and inconvenience of taking precautions; (4) obviousness of the harm; (5) type of occupier (6) degree of the entrant’s skill or knowledge.
Children
Section 2(3)(a) provides that an occupier must be prepared for children to be less careful than adults. As a result, a higher standard of care is expected from the occupier when children are visiting his premises. For example, if a city authority plants a bush with poisonous berries in a public park, it should fence it off in case the children visiting the park are tempted to eat these berries. [4] However, an occupier may reasonably expect that his child visitors be accompanied by their parents or other guardians, who will look after them. Therefore, it had been held that the occupier will have discharged his duty toward a child if he had made the premises reasonably safe for the child accompanied by the kind of guardian that he can expect them to be accompanied by in the circumstances. [5]
Specialist visitors
Section 2(3)(b) provides that professional visitors, i.e. persons in the exercise of their skill, should "appreciate and guard against any special risk ordinary incident to [the exercise of the skill]". This means that the occupier need not exercise special care to prevent injury to persons who have come to repair the premises or perform other special services in them. So, the family of chimney sweeps which negligently entered the occupier's chimney while his boiler was on and suffocated could not recover against the occupier of the premises: the risk they decided to take should have been known to them as part of their profession and they should have guarded against it. [6]
Liability for others
The occupier will not normally be liable for damage caused by the negligence of persons who were carrying out work on his premises, such as independent contractors. So, if damage was caused by a faulty maintenance of lifts, the occupier will not be liable because this damage was the result of other persons' negligence. [7] Nevertheless, if the occupier:
- was not reasonable in employing the contractor;
- did not make sure that the contractor was sufficiently competent; or
- did not properly supervise the contractor’s work,
he may still be liable under s.2(4)(b) of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957.
A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship. In contrast to other terms for legally operative language, the term disclaimer usually implies situations that involve some level of uncertainty, waiver, or risk.
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation which is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The claimant must be able to show a duty of care imposed by law which the defendant has breached. In turn, breaching a duty may subject an individual to liability. The duty of care may be imposed by operation of law between individuals who have no current direct relationship but eventually become related in some manner, as defined by common law.
English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil, rather than criminal law, that usually requires a payment of money to make up for damage that is caused. Alongside contracts and unjust enrichment, tort law is usually seen as forming one of the three main pillars of the law of obligations.
Rylands v Fletcher[1868] UKHL 1 was a decision by the House of Lords which established a new area of English tort law. Rylands employed contractors to build a reservoir, playing no active role in its construction. When the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts improperly filled with debris, they chose to continue work rather than properly blocking them up. The result was that on 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst and flooded a neighbouring mine, run by Fletcher, causing £937 worth of damage. Fletcher brought a claim under negligence against Rylands, through which the case eventually went to the Exchequer of Pleas. At the court of first instance, the majority ruled in favour of Rylands. Bramwell B, however, dissenting, argued that the claimant had the right to enjoy his land free of interference from water, and that as a result the defendant was guilty of trespass and the commissioning of a nuisance. Bramwell's argument was affirmed, both by the Court of Exchequer Chamber and the House of Lords, leading to the development of the "Rule in Rylands v Fletcher"; that "the person who for his own purposes brings on his lands 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".
In the law of torts, an invitee is a person who is invited to land by the possessor of the land as a member of the public or one who enters the land of another for the purpose of business dealings with the possessor of the land. The status of a visitor as an invitee defines the legal rights of the visitor if they are injured due to the negligence of the property owner.
In the law of tort, property, and criminal law a trespasser is a person who commits the act of trespassing on a property, that is, without the permission of the owner. Being present on land as a trespasser thereto creates liability in the trespasser, so long as the trespass is intentional. At the same time, the status of a visitor as a trespasser defines the legal rights of the visitor if they are injured due to the negligence of the property owner.
Volenti non fit iniuria is a common law doctrine which states that if someone willingly places themselves in a position where harm might result, knowing that some degree of harm might result, they are not able to bring a claim against the other party in tort or delict. Volenti applies only to the risk which a reasonable person would consider them as having assumed by their actions; thus a boxer consents to being hit, and to the injuries that might be expected from being hit, but does not consent to his opponent striking him with an iron bar, or punching him outside the usual terms of boxing. Volenti is also known as a "voluntary assumption of risk".
In English tort law, an individual may owe a duty of care to another, to ensure that they do not suffer any unreasonable harm or loss. If such a duty is found to be breached, a legal liability is imposed upon the tortfeasor to compensate the victim for any losses they incur. The idea of individuals owing strangers a duty of care – where beforehand such duties were only found from contractual arrangements – developed at common law, throughout the 20th century. The doctrine was significantly developed in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson, where a woman succeeded in establishing a manufacturer of ginger beer owed her a duty of care, where it had been negligently produced. Following this, the duty concept has expanded into a coherent judicial test, which must be satisfied in order to claim in negligence.
Premises liability is the liability that a landowner or occupier has for certain torts that occur on their land.
Public liability is part of the law of tort which focuses on civil wrongs. An applicant usually sues the respondent under common law based on negligence and/or damages. Claims are usually successful when it can be shown that the owner/occupier was responsible for an injury, therefore they breached their duty of care.
Roles v. Nathan [1963] 1 W.L.R. 1117, [1963] 2 All E.R. 908 is an occupiers' liability case in English tort law. It concerns s.2(3)(b) of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, which states,
"An occupier may expect that a person, in the exercise of his calling, will appreciate and guard against special risks ordinarily incident to it, so far as the occupier leaves him free to do so."
The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that covers occupiers' liability. The result of the Third Report of the Law Reform Committee, the Act was introduced to Parliament as the Occupiers' Liability Bill and granted the Royal Assent on 6 June 1957, coming into force on 1 January 1958. The Act unified several classes of visitors to property and the duty of care owed to them by the occupier, as well as codifying elements of the common law relating to this duty of care. It also covered the duty owed to parties to a contract entering the property and ways of excluding the liability for visitors. The Act introduced an element of liability for landlords who failed to maintain their properties and were as a result responsible for the injury of a non-tenant, something counter to the previous common law rule in English law. The Act is still valid law, and forms much of the law relating to occupiers' liability in English law along with the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to tort law in common law jurisdictions:
The Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that covers occupiers' liability for trespassers. In British Railways Board v Herrington 1972 AC 877, the House of Lords had decided that occupiers owed a duty to trespassers, but the exact application of the decision was unclear. The matter was then referred to the Law Commission for a report, and as a result the Occupiers' Liability Bill was introduced to Parliament by Lord Hailsham on 23 June 1983. The Act was given the Royal Assent on 13 March 1984 as the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 and came into force on 13 May.
Wheat v E Lacon & Co Ltd [1966] 1 All ER 582 is a decision of the House of Lords concerning the definition of "occupier" for the purposes of Occupiers' Liability Act 1957. The leading speech in the case was delivered by Lord Denning, during his short tenure as a Law lord.
Burnie Port Authority v General Jones Pty Ltd is a tort law case from the High Court of Australia, which decided it would abolish the rule in Rylands v Fletcher, and the ignis suus principle, incorporating them generally into the tort of negligence.
Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2003] UKHL 47 is a 2003 court case in England from the House of Lords regarding the torts of negligence and occupiers' liability.
Donoghue v Folkestone Properties Limited (2003) is an English court case heard in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales concerning the tort of occupiers' liability from the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984.
Tort law in India is primarily governed by judicial precedent as in other common law jurisdictions, supplemented by statutes governing damages, civil procedure, and codifying common law torts. As in other common law jurisdictions, a tort is breach of a non-contractual duty which has caused damage to the plaintiff giving rise to a civil cause of action and for which remedy is available. If a remedy does not exist, a tort has not been committed since the rationale of tort law is to provide a remedy to the person who has been wronged.
Weir-Rodgers v SF Trust Ltd [2005] IESC 2 is a reported decision of the Irish Supreme Court that confirmed that under Section 4 of the Occupiers Liability Act 1995 an occupier of land is not required to take all reasonable care to safeguard the person or property of either trespassers or recreational users.
