Two Statutory Strict Liabilities

Abstract

Where injury or damage is caused by a public authority in the exercise of its functions it would be broadly true to say that the tendency of the modern law is to equate the authority with a private person or trading company causing the same loss. Qualifications exist, of course, the most important being those relating to the Crown, to statutory authority for works which would otherwise be a nuisance and the principle that the courts should not interfere with intra vires “policy” decisions, but there are now comparatively few substantive or adjectival rules putting a public authority in a protected position. Indeed, there is now some demand that we should place public authorities in an inferior position by exposing them to a regime of strict liability for the risks they create in pursuit of a supposed benefit for us all. In view of this attitude it is perhaps not surprising that we tend to consider the public authority only as defendant, but a recent Court of Appeal decision reminds us that there are still instances of legislative solicitude for the authority as plaintiff. The background involves a long and still unsettled wrangle over statutory interpretation beginning with the famous case of River Wear Commissioners v. Adamson.