Abstract
HOLBECK Hall Hotel stood on the cliffs at Scarborough with views over a lawn and rose garden to the North Sea. The undercliff below the hotel was owned by Scarborough Borough Council. Over the years, natural erosion of the coastline led to relatively minor landslips in the area. The Council engaged engineers to investigate them and remedial works were carried out in 1989, but in 1993 there was a massive landslip. The lawn and rose garden fell into the sea, and the ground under the seaward wing of the hotel collapsed so badly that the whole building had to be demolished. Its owner claimed damages from the Council, and Judge John Hicks Q.C., applying Leakey v. National Trust [1980] Q.B. 485, held the Council liable for breach of a “measured duty of care”. The Court of Appeal agreed that an occupier could be under such a duty to prevent danger to a neighbour’s land from lack of support due to natural causes, but held the Council not liable because it owed no duty in relation to latent defects which could only have been discovered by extensive geological investigation: Holbeck Hall Hotel Ltd. v. Scarborough Borough Council [2000] 2 W.L.R. 1396.
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