## Facts

- Owners of a mill built a large reservoir on their land to store water for industrial use.
- The reservoir site contained old, disused mine workings with imperfectly filled vertical shafts and connecting passages beneath the surface.
- After the reservoir was filled, water broke through the defective shafts, traveled through underground workings, and flooded a neighboring coal mine.
- The neighboring mine’s lessee and occupier suffered substantial damage and sued to recover losses.
- An arbitrator found the damage resulted from insufficient care by the contractors who built the reservoir, not from personal negligence by the reservoir owners.
- A trial verdict favored the mine owner; an intermediate court found no cause of action; an appellate court reversed and imposed liability; the final court affirmed liability.

## Issues

1. Whether a landowner who accumulates on land something likely to cause harm if it escapes is liable for resulting damage to a neighbor without proof of personal negligence.
2. Whether liability depends on the accumulation being associated with a “non-natural” (extraordinary or unusual) use of land.
3. Whether hidden defects under the land and negligence of independent contractors relieve the landowner of responsibility for an escape.

## Decision

- The court affirmed judgment for the mine owner and held the reservoir owners liable for the flooding.
- A person who brings onto land and keeps there a thing likely to cause harm if it escapes must keep it confined at that person’s peril.
- The rule applied because the defendants’ storage of a large quantity of water in an artificial reservoir for industrial purposes was a non-natural use of land.
- The defendants’ lack of personal fault did not bar liability.
- The defendants could not avoid liability by relying on the negligence of independent contractors or by pointing to unknown subsurface mine workings.

## Legal Principles

- Strict liability may attach when a defendant, for the defendant’s own purposes, brings onto land and keeps there something likely to do mischief if it escapes, and it escapes and causes damage.
- The strict-liability rule is limited to situations involving a non-natural (unusual or extraordinary) use of land that increases risk to others beyond ordinary land use.
- Liability is based on responsibility for the escape itself, not on proof of negligence, and the duty to prevent escape is not delegable to independent contractors.
- Natural or ordinary incidents of land use (such as ordinary drainage in the natural course) are treated differently from artificial accumulation in unusual quantity or manner.

## Conclusion

The court imposed strict liability on the reservoir owners for flooding a neighbor’s mine because they made a non-natural use of land by artificially accumulating a large mass of water, and they were responsible for the natural consequences of its escape regardless of personal negligence, contractor fault, or hidden defects.


Fletcher v. Rylands, L.R. 3 H.L. 330 (H.L. 1868)