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Transco plc. v. Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council1
I. INTRODUCTION
The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher2-under which a landowner can be held strictly liable for a "non-natural" (or special) use of his land which causes damage to his neighbours-has had a chequered history. When the rule was first formulated by Blackburn J.3 in the middle of the 19th century, it looked set to play a significant role in tort law. However, the advent of the tort of negligence, and judicial concern about the imposition of strict liability in any but the most extreme circumstances meant that it never fulfilled its early promise. By the end of the 20th century its role had become so marginalised that in 1994 the Australian High Court, when deciding Burnie Port Authority v. General Jones Pty. Ltd.,4 held that the rule should cease to exist and that cases which would previously have fallen within its ambit should in future be dealt with under the umbrella of negligence. Although the English courts did not go quite this far, in Cambridge Water Co. Ltd. v. Eastern Counties Leather5 (decided earlier in 1994), the House of Lords held that the rule should never have been accorded the status of a distinct tort, since it was in reality merely a sub-category of nuisance. Following these two decisions, the future for the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher looked decidedly bleak. Now however, the House of Lords in the case of Transco has chosen, in spite of apparently persuasive arguments that the rule should be allowed to fade into historical obscurity, to reaffirm its applicability, albeit within the framework of nuisance. As a result, beleaguered and diminished though it may be, the rule has-at least in England-survived to fight another day.
II. THE FACTS
Transco concerned a water pipe owned by the defendant local authority, Stockport Metropolitan Council ("the council"). The pipe supplied water to a block of flats in Brinnington, Stockport. The claimant, Transco pic. (formerly British Gas plc.) owned a high-pressure steel gas main which passed beneath the surface of a nearby disused railway line owned by the council. The gas main had been installed in 1966, and when the council had purchased the land in 1972, the claimant had been granted a continuing easement...