The owners of the Talbot Hotel pub in Richmond, North Yorkshire, have failed in their Appeal Court challenge to a ruling that they must pay more than £35,000 compensation after water escaped from the pub’s drains and damaged the property next door.
Phoenix Inns Ltd and Unique Pub Properties Ltd were challenging a Newcastle County Court decision, in which Judge Moir ruled that they must pay the Fawcett family, the landlords of 34 Market Place, Richmond, compensation totalling £35,432 for allowing rain and foul water to pass into their cellar.
The judge also ordered the pub owners to prevent any more leakages and to take steps to remedy the nuisance by 5 May 2002.
In the Court of Appeal in November last year, Stuart Brown QC, counsel for the pub owners, claimed that Judge Moir’s finding that the drainage system at the Talbot was the main source of the problem at no 34 was not supported by the evidence.
He said that no 34 was a 200-year-old building that had had a history of water penetration since 1965. The cellar floor was below ground-floor level, he said, and had no barriers to prevent dampness from entering.
The Court of Appeal has now upheld the county court decision. Aikens J said: “The judge had a very difficult task to perform. She had concluded that the ingress of water from the Talbot to the cellar of no 34 did constitute a nuisance. She was then faced with two particular problems.
“The first was that this had been going on since the 1960s, whereas damages could be claimed only for loss and damage caused by the nuisance from a period of six years prior to the start of proceedings. The second was that there was another cause of water getting into the cellar of no 34, namely groundwater.”
Adding that the judge had dealt with these matters by calculating past and future damage and making appropriate reductions, he continued: “The judge set out the evidence upon which she relied. I am satisfied that she had well in mind the need for causation between the nuisance and the damage done and so the damages awarded. I think that link was maintained.”
Fawcett and others v Phoenix Inns Ltd and others Court of Appeal (Schiemann and Arden LJJ and Aikens J) 12 February 2003.
References: PLS News 12/02/03
