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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd v Morris (t/a Soundstar Studio) [2004] EWCA Civ 172 (20 February 2004) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2004/172.html Cite as: [2004] Env LR 41, [2004] EWCA Civ 172 |
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COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROYDON COUNTY COURT
(MR RECORDER PULMAN QC)
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
LORD JUSTICE BUXTON
and
LORD JUSTICE THOMAS
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Network Rail Infrastructure Limited (formerly Railtrack PLC) |
Appellant |
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- and - |
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CJ Morris (trading as Soundstar Studio) |
Respondent |
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Smith Bernal Wordwave Limited, 190 Fleet Street
London EC4A 2AG
Tel No: 020 7421 4040, Fax No: 020 7831 8838
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
P Havers QC & C Morris-Coole (instructed by ASB Law) for the Defendants
____________________
Crown Copyright ©
Lord Phillips, MR:
Introduction
The facts
The basis of the claim
Extraordinary user
"A nuisance of this kind, to be actionable, must be such as to be a real interference with the comfort or convenience of living according to the standards of the average man. An interference which alone causes harm to something of abnormal sensitiveness does not of itself constitute a nuisance. A man cannot increase the liabilities of his neighbour by applying his own property to special uses, whether for business or for pleasure."
"It would, in my opinion, be wrong to say that the doing something not in itself noxious is a nuisance because it does harm to some particular trade in the adjoining property, although it would not prejudicially affect any ordinary trade carried on there, and does not interfere with the ordinary enjoyment of life. Here it is shewn that ordinary paper would not be damaged by what the Defendants are doing, but only a particular kind of paper, and it is not shewn that there is heat such as to incommode the workpeople on the Plaintiff's premises. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the Plaintiff is not entitled to relief on the ground that what the Defendants are doing is a nuisance."
Lindley LJ gave a judgment to similar effect. Lopes LJ at p. 97 agreed. He said:
"I think the Plaintiff cannot complain of what is begin done as a nuisance. A man who carries on an exceptionally delicate trade cannot complain because it is injured by his neighbour doing something lawful on his property, if it is something which would not injure anything but an exceptionally delicate trade."
"Now, if the instrument be taken as it was when the injury occurred, its nature is such that to insure its immunity from disturbance is a somewhat serious liability to cast on neighbours. To describe this as a delicate instrument might be inaccurate, if the term were used in relation to other electrical instruments of extreme sensibility. But in the present discussion this is not the true comparison at all.
The true comparison is with things used in the ordinary enjoyment of property, and this instrument differs from such things in its peculiar liability to be affected by even minute currents of electricity. Now, having regard to the assumptions of the appellants' arguments, it seems necessary to point out that the appellants, as licensees to lay their cable in the sea and as owners of the premises in Cape Town where the signals are received, cannot claim higher privileges than other owners of land, and cannot create for themselves, by reason of the peculiarity of their trade apparatus, a higher right to limit the operations of their neighbours than belongs to ordinary owners of land who do not trade with telegraphic cables. If the apparatus of such concerns requires special protection against the operations of their neighbours, that must be found in legislation; the remedy at present invoked is an appeal to a common law principle which applies to much more usual and less special conditions. A man cannot increase the liabilities of his neighbour by applying his own property to special uses, whether for business or pleasure."
"I accept that it may not be thought especially important, but it is certainly an ordinary incident of the enjoyment of property. It is the stuff of many young people's pleasure, and is a major part of modern music making".
Accordingly, he concluded that the electromagnetic interference emitted onto Mr Morris' premises was capable of being a nuisance.
"if you build now any piece of electronic kit, music or whatever, there are two requirements, one is how much interference you export to your neighbours and how much interference your equipment can tolerate."
He went on to say that prior to these regulations the equipment was very sensitive to electro-magnetic interference. Nowadays it has to comply with specific standards that make it more immune to this sort of interference. Later he commented that the problem experienced by Mr Morris would not be encountered with guitars produced according to these regulations.
Foreseeability
"In our opinion Railtrack could not reasonably have foreseen that these track circuits could have caused problems of this nature at a distance of 60 to 70 metres."
Those acting for Mr Morris challenged this conclusion on the ground that it "is unsupported by evidence, or scientific reasoning and lacks the imprimatur of an expert". AEA Technology responded:
"The question of foresight is always going to be to some extent subjective. In our opinion we would not normally expect a magnetic field resulting from a relatively low current source to be causing adverse affects at such a distance. This is borne by the fact that the field is very small and is only a problem because of the sensitivity of the recording equipment. For houses adjoining the railway, an engineer in 1994 might reasonably have been expected to consider the effect of electromagnetic interference. However, we believe most engineers would have discounted adverse effects from audio frequency magnetic fields at a distance of 60 to 70 metres."
"Although the exact frequency and track of equipment were not determined, the circumstantial evidence leaves no doubt that the interference was induced from the Tuned Zone. The Electric Guitar has a "pick up", which consists of coils feeding an Amplifier. The Loudspeakers probably have unscreened cables feeding them. Tenants of other premises state that they have similar problems. In most cases it can be identified that they are underneath a Tuned Zone. One tenant, who is not near a Tuned Zone, states that he sustains a small amount of interference. Other premises were not visited. It is evident that the high (20-30 amp) currents in the Transmitter Tuned Zone (20m section of track) were producing electromagnetic fields which were interfering with the amplification equipment underneath. Apparently, the current in the rails, (probably near the Transmitter end when shunted by an approaching train), can also produce a degree of interference."
"It follows from Mr Bradley's report that the Defendants knew that interference was going to be suffered by the occupiers of premises which are not near a tuned zone when those premises are used as a recording studio. It is not open to the Defendants to say that it was not reasonably to be foreseen. It had actually been foreseen by them because several of their tenants had suffered as a direct result of having a T1 21 tuned zone nearby; and more importantly for this case, a further occupier some distance away had also suffered.
In layman's terms, the Defendants cannot say "We had no idea this could happen" because they in fact knew it had happened. It had occurred elsewhere, and it was apparent that although they were concerned about it, and I am told they paid compensation to those premises, they did not take up Dr Apperley's suggestion of advising further on this."
"As stated we do not have definitive information regarding the "Arches" problem. On the assumption that the studio in question was located directly below a tuned zone then the field within that studio would have been many times greater than that measured in the Soundstar studio. The reason being that the tuned zone formed by the rails and the bonds acts like a large coil placed flat on the ground. The lines of flux surround the conductors of the coil and are concentrated in the centre of the coil. Normal building constructional material does not attenuate or impede the magnetic flux. Therefore if tuned zone is directly above the studio in the arch, and the distance between the studio and the rails no more than a few metres then the field is likely to have been orders of magnitude greater than the field present in the Soundstar studio."
Lord Justice Buxton:
"settled the law to the effect that foreseeability of harm is indeed a prerequisite of the recovery of damages in private nuisance…..It is unnecessary in the present case to consider the precise nature of this principle; but it appears from Lord Reid's statement of the law that he regarded it essentially as one relating to remoteness of damage"
"the answer to the issue falls to be found by applying the concepts of reasonableness between neighbours (real or figurative) and reasonable foreseeability which underlie much modern tort law and, more particularly, the law of nuisance. The great cases in nuisance decided in our time have these concepts at their heart…..In both the second Wagon Mound case and Goldman v Hargrave [[1967] 1 AC 645] the judgments….are directed to what a reasonable person in the shoes of the defendant would have done. The label nuisance or negligence is treated as of no real significance. In this field, I think, the concern of the common law lies in working out the fair and just content and incidents of neighbour's duty rather than affixing a label and inferring the extent of the duty from it."
Lord Justice Thomas:
Order: