Sir Peter North, OCCUPIERS’ LIABILITY Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com ), 2014. xxxv + 263 pp. ISBN 9780199680641. £80.
| Author | Gordon Cameron |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2015.0287 |
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
| Pages | 293-294 |
It must be unusual for forty three years to elapse between editions, yet this is the second edition of a work first published in 1971. Significant changes in this field were made by statute in 1972 and 1984 and, of course, forty three years of case law has accumulated, rendering the preparation needed for this new edition something rather more than an update. Written, as it has been, from retirement following a highly distinguished career, one can speculate on whether the author's return to the work is the fulfilment of a long held ambition to be realised when time finally allowed. Whatever the motivation behind its production, it is a welcome addition to private law literature.
This is, of course, an English law text, albeit one in which Scottish, Northern Irish, and Commonwealth case law is well represented. In England, as in Scotland, the law is on a statutory footing, which nevertheless depends on the common law for certain elements, for example, determining (in both jurisdictions) the occupier and (in England) the persons to whom a duty is owed. The status of occupiers’ liability as a specialist branch of liability for negligence is explained by the relatively late development of general principles of liability for negligence, by which time the essential foundation for occupiers’ liability as a category in its own right had already been laid down, in the English courts at least. A very clear overview of key elements in the development of the law is presented in the first chapter.
The book demonstrates amply the advantages of a specialist work with a relatively narrow focus over more general treatments of torts. This is not to denigrate the quality of works on torts in general, but there is an inevitable compromise in terms of level of detail in a general text. The work under review shows no evidence of compromise. It offers a fully comprehensive exploration of every aspect of occupiers’ liability. Indeed, the coverage extends beyond what is strictly termed occupiers’ liability to include treatment of the duties of builders, and the liabilities of landlords under the Defective Premises Act 1972.
In the process of preparing this review, the question had occurred of whether the work is perhaps a little uncritical. Seen from outside the English jurisdiction, the law appears at first sight unnecessarily complicated. Why have two occupiers’ liability statutes, the Acts of 1957 and 1984, when the Scots get by with one? Why retain the old and problematic...
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