Harooni & Anor v Rustins Ltd

A claimant alleging that fire spread from adjoining premises must prove the relevant causal sequence on the balance of probabilities and show that the loss would not have occurred independently. The rule in Rylands v Fletcher remains narrowly confined. Storing substantial quantities of flammable material may amount to a non-natural use, but liability requires an escape causing the relevant damage. Where fire begins elsewhere and merely passes through the defendant’s land, liability does not ordinarily arise. A failure to install a fire alarm does not, without evidence of causation and an applicable duty extending to neighbouring premises, establish negligence.

A fire destroyed interconnected warehouses in North London. The claimants alleged that the fire spread from the defendant’s warehouse, which contained substantial quantities of flammable products, through an intervening warehouse and into the claimants’ premises. Claims were advanced in negligence and under the rule in Rylands v Fletcher.

The central issues were the route and timing of the fire, whether the defendant’s stored materials caused the destruction, whether the claimants’ premises would have been destroyed in any event, and whether the absence of a fire alarm created liability.

1. Claim dismissed. Judgment was entered for the defendant. The claimants failed to prove that the fire spread from the defendant’s warehouse to their premises or that their premises would not have been destroyed in any event (paras [48]-[62], [69]).
2. The court preferred the contemporaneous photographic evidence and the evidence of the fire officers. The fire had probably reached the claimants’ premises through adjoining warehouses before any major conflagration in the defendant’s warehouse. The evidence was inconsistent with the claimants’ proposed sequence of events (paras [50]-[60]).
3. The negligence claim could not succeed. The absence of a fire alarm was not shown to breach a duty extending to neighbouring warehouses. In any event, there was no evidential causal connection between the absence of an alarm and the spread of fire to the claimants’ premises (para [64]).
4. Obiter, the storage of more than 200,000 litres of flammable products, including highly flammable products, would have amounted to a non-natural use of land. If the defendant’s resulting conflagration had caused the escape of fire and the destruction of the claimants’ premises, liability under Rylands v Fletcher would have followed. The doctrine does not require proof of fault, but remains subject to its established limits (paras [65]-[68]).
5. Obiter, where a fire starts on another person’s land and merely passes through or over the defendant’s land, burning flammable material on the way, the rule does not impose liability. Nor would liability arise where the claimant’s premises would have been destroyed by the independently spreading fire in any event (paras [67]-[68]).