Burnie Port Authority v General Jones Pty Ltd
Burnie Port Authority v. General Jones Pty (1994) 179 CLR 520 is a tort law case from the Australian High Court, which decided it would abolish the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher.
Facts
A fire, caused by an independent contractor’s employee welding negligently, began on the defendant’s premises and spread to a nearby property. The property was burnt. The plaintiff sued under several heads, including the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher.
Judgment
The High Court held that Rylands involved ‘quite unacceptable uncertainty’ (540). It said that Blackburn J’s formulation had been ‘all but obliterated by subsequent judicial explanations and qualifications’ (536). And at the time of Rylands, negligence liability was limited to ‘a miscellany of disparate categories of cases’ and only with Heaven v. Pender (1883) 11 QBD 503 and Donoghue v. Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580 was liability grounded on general foreseeability (543). The justices therefore felt that the rule should be done away with and so the independent contractor was not liable under that, but could only be culpable in the law of negligence.
Procedural History
- Supreme Court of Tasmania: found for the plaintiff against the defendant on the grounds of the ignis suus rule.
- Defendant appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Tasmania: found for the plaintiff on the basis of Rylands v Fletcher principle.
- Appealed to the High Court of Australia