REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
| Date | 01 May 1955 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1955.tb00300.x |
| Author | R. F. V. Heuston |
| Published date | 01 May 1955 |
REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEES
OCCUPIER’S LIABILITY
THE Third Report of the Law Reform Committee (Cmd.
9805)
deals
with a topic of great interest to all who are concerned with the
oommon law-the liability of occupiers of property to invitees,
licensees, and trespassers. This
is
a field of
“
lawyer’s law
”
which,
although untouched by statute, has acquired a bad reputation.
The broad and simple principles established by our great Victorian
judges have been obscured by over-refinement and subtlety.
As
Pro-
fessor Lawson has noticed
(The Rational Strength
of
English Law),
when English law makes a mistake
it
is usually due to an excess
rather than to a lack of rationality. Now the Law Reform Com-
mittee has had to recommend the drastic solution of a statute to
amend and codify the law-a possibility which, as Dean Prosser has
recently remarked in another connection, is likely to make many
people cringe.
The main recommendations of the Committee may be surveyed
under two heads.
A-OCCUPIER’S LIABILITY
TO
WARDS
PERSONS
ENTERING
ON
HIS
PREMISES
Here a distinction is naturally drawn between lawful but
non-
contractual visitors, contractual visitors, and trespassers.
Lawful but non-contractual visitors
On
this subject the Committee make the radical (but scarcely
unexpected) suggestion that the present distinction between invitees
and licensees should be abolished. Instead the occupier of premises
(a term which should be defined to include movable structures)
should owe a duty
(“
the common duty of care
”)
to every person
coming upon the premises at his invitation
or
by his permission
express
or
implied, to take such care as in all the circumstances of
the case is reasonable to see that the premises are reasonably safe
for use by the visitor for the purpose to which the invitation
or
permission relates. Further, persons entering premises under some
statutory
or
other lawful right of entry,
or
persons entering pre-
mises provided for the use of the public, shall be deemed to have
the permission of the occupier.
The following further points about the proposed common duty
of care should be noted
:
(i)
It
should be a question of fact whether the occupier has dis-
charged the duty in any particular case, but
in
general a convenient
271
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