| NUISANCE —Public nuisance —Tort — Whether claim lying for damages for personal injury
Corby Group Litigation v Corby Borough Council [2008] EWCA Civ 463; [2008] WLR (D) 144
CA: Ward, Dyson and Smith LJJ: 8 May 2008
Damages for personal injury were recoverable in the tort of public nuisance.
The Court of Appeal so held when dismissing the appeal of the defendant, Corby Borough Council, from a decision of Master Leslie sitting in the Queen’s Bench Division on 25 June 2007 dismissing the defendant’s interlocutory application to strike out a claim in public nuisance brought by 18 claimants, who were persons who had been born with upper limb deformities. The claimants claimed, inter alia, damages in the tort of public nuisance, asserting that their deformities had arisen from their mothers’ exposure to toxic materials in the course of their pregnancies during the defendant’s reclamation and decontamination programme applicable to land in Corby. The strike-out application was founded on the defendant’s assertion that even if, historically, a claim for damages for personal injury had lain in public nuisance such a claim no longer existed. The Master, rejecting that contention, held that the claim could not be found to have no reasonable prospects of success. Foskett J gave permission to appeal but ordered that the case should be heard by the Court of Appeal.
DYSON LJ said that the defendant claimed that the question whether damages were recoverable for personal injury in the tort of public nuisance had never been the subject of a reasoned decision, and that, although the House of Lords had not expressly rejected such a right, the effect of statements of certain of their Lordships in Hunter v Canary Wharf Ltd [1997] AC 655 and Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] 2 AC 1 was that such damages were not recoverable. However, the passages relied on were obiter dicta since in neither case was the claim based on public nuisance and nor was there any claim for damages for personal injury; and the dicta did not bear the weight which the defendant sought to place on them. Therefore the long-standing principle that damages for personal injury could be recovered in public nuisance had not been reversed.
SMITH and WARD LJJ agreed.
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