## Facts

- A leather-tanning factory used perchloroethene (PCE) as a solvent; small spillages over many years seeped into the ground beneath the premises.
- A statutory water undertaker purchased and used a borehole about 1.3 miles from the factory to supply potable water.
- After drinking-water standards adopted in the early 1980s limited permissible PCE levels, testing showed the borehole exceeded those limits due to PCE contamination traced to the factory.
- The water undertaker stopped using the borehole as part of its public supply.
- At the time of the spillages, it was not generally known in the industry, nor reasonably appreciable, that small PCE spillages could migrate through soil and contaminate distant groundwater at harmful concentrations.
- The water undertaker sued in negligence, private nuisance, and under Rylands v Fletcher.
- The trial court dismissed all claims for lack of reasonable foreseeability; the intermediate appellate court reversed on nuisance and Rylands; the final court reinstated the trial dismissal.

## Issues

1. Whether private nuisance liability requires that the type of damage suffered was reasonably foreseeable.
2. Whether Rylands v Fletcher liability requires reasonable foreseeability of the kind of damage.
3. Whether Rylands v Fletcher is an independent strict-liability tort or a special application of nuisance governed by nuisance principles, including remoteness.
4. Whether contamination of a borehole 1.3 miles away from low-level PCE spillages was a reasonably foreseeable type of harm at the relevant time.

## Decision

- The final court allowed the factory operator’s appeal and restored dismissal of the action.
- Private nuisance requires reasonable foreseeability of the type of damage; unforeseeable damage is too remote.
- The same foreseeability requirement applies to Rylands v Fletcher; liability under that rule is not absolute.
- Rylands v Fletcher was treated as a special application of nuisance, and therefore subject to nuisance’s remoteness limits.
- On the facts, the borehole contamination at that distance and concentration was not reasonably foreseeable when the spillages occurred; the claims in negligence, nuisance, and Rylands failed.

## Legal Principles

- In private nuisance, recoverable harm is limited by remoteness: the defendant is liable only for damage of a kind that was reasonably foreseeable at the time of the relevant conduct.
- The Wagon Mound (No. 1) remoteness approach applies in nuisance: unforeseeable types of damage are not compensable even if actual harm occurs.
- Rylands v Fletcher is best understood as a subcategory of nuisance concerning escapes from an unusually dangerous use of land, rather than a freestanding absolute-liability tort.
- Rylands v Fletcher claims also require that the kind of damage resulting from the escape was reasonably foreseeable.

## Conclusion

The court aligned private nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher with negligence-style remoteness by requiring reasonable foreseeability of the type of harm, and held that distant groundwater contamination from small historical PCE spillages was too remote to ground liability.


Cambridge Water Co. v. E. Cts. Leather PLC, [1994] 2 A.C. 264 (H.L.)