An Update On The Wyvern Tyres Case

As property and liability insurers are all too familiar; fire often spreads onto neighbouring land. The judgments of the Court of Appeal in the recent "Wyvern Tyres" case of Stannard v Gore [2012] consider the ways in which a person can be held liable for damage caused in this way.

For those short of time, the points to remember from this update are that:

• The basic rule from Rylands v Fletcher is that the defendant must have put his land to a "non-natural" use, brought a dangerous thing onto his land and that the dangerous thing must have escaped onto the neighbour's land causing damage
• The Wyvern Tyres case confirms that damage caused by fire spreading from an adjoining property can fall within the strict liability rule of Rylands v Fletcher and suggests that such a case is likely to be rare