Rylands v. Fletcher (1868) LR 3 HL 330

The defendants owned a mill and wished to undertake modifications to their water supply. To do this, they employed sub-contractor's to build a reservoir on their land. The contractor's found disused passages and mines beneath the land on which their building work was to take place and did not attempt to seal them off. When the reservoir was eventually filled with water, the result was that the water flooded the plaintiff's mine.

Here, it was impossible to impose nuisance liability upon the defendants as the damage was a 'one off' event (a current case, however, may find nuisance liability likely). Also, it was not clear that the contractor's should have forseen that the work that they had undertaken would cause harm to the plaintiff, thus it was improbable that the plaintiff would be successful in claiming negligence. A trespass action may also have proved to be unsuccessful as the damage caused was an inadvertent result of the activities undertaken by the defendant.