Robinson v Kilvert
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Date | 1888 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
Nuisance - Landlord and Tenant - Implied Agreement for quiet Enjoyment - Derogation from Grant.
If a person carries on upon his property some process which is in itself noxious, a neighbour may be entitled to restrain him from carrying it on so as to cause damage to him; but if the process is not in itself noxious, it cannot be complained of as a nuisance unless it interferes with the ordinary enjoyment of life or the ordinary use of property.
A landlord who lets part of his property for the purpose of a particular trade, is not to be taken as having entered into an implied contract precluding him from a reasonable and ordinary use of the remainder, on the ground that such use injures a particular class of his tenant's goods, it not having been known to him at the letting and not being a matter of common knowledge that that particular class of goods was liable to be so injured, nor is such user by the landlord a breach of his covenant for quiet enjoyment.
A landlord let a floor to a tenant for a paper warehouse, retaining the cellar immediately below. He afterwards commenced in the cellar a manufacture which required the air to be hot and dry, and employed a heating apparatus. This raised the temperature on the floor of the tenant's room to about 80°, but the general air of the room was never nearly so high, and it did not appear that the workpeople were inconvenienced. The tenant sued to restrain the landlord from heating the cellar, on the ground that the heat dried his brown paper and made it less valuable, though it was not such a heat as would injure paper generally. The landlord did not know at the time of the letting that the tenant was going to store any particular kind of paper which was liable to be deteriorated by a heat which would not hurt paper generally:—
Held, that the landlord was not liable either on the ground of nuisance or of implied agreement for quiet enjoyment.
BY a short agreement in writing, dated the 28th of February, 1887, between the Defendants (the Kilverts) of the one part and the Plaintiff, R. H. Robinson (under his trade appellation of Robinson & Co., “paper and twine merchants”), of the other part, the Kilverts agreed to let and Robinson to take the ground floor of a warehouse in Manchester, for seven years from Lady Day, 1887, at the rent of £70. The tenant agreed to keep the premises in good repair (outside walls, principal timbers, and reasonable wear and tear excepted), and to yield them up in such repair at the end of the tenancy, and agreed not to assign or underlet. The landlords agreed to keep the drains properly trapped and in good condition, and to allow the tenant to remove any fittings he might place in the premises, subject to their being removed before the expiration of the tenancy.
The Plaintiff, to the knowledge of the Defendants, took the premises as a warehouse for paper and twine. Before taking them he inspected the cellar below, to see whether the floor would be sufficiently strong to carry his heavy goods. He saw there a boiler, and, as he deposed, said to G. Kilvert, one of the lessors, that it would never do to use the boiler) as it would dry his paper, to which the reply was that it probably would never be used again except to light the lessors' warehouse with electricity; that the Plaintiff then said, “Then you will light me as well,” to which the answer was, “Oh, yes.” He saw that the cellar had no ceiling. G. Kilvert denied having said anything as to the probability that the boiler would not be used. About September, 1887, the lessors commenced business as paper-box makers, for which they required warm and dry air. For this purpose they used the boiler, and set up some steam piping in connection with it, the effect of which was that heat escaped into the Plaintiff's premises, and the more so as the boards of the floor did not fit closely. It appeared that sometimes the temperature in the Plaintiff's warehouse rose as high as 80° on the floor, but it did not appear from the evidence that the temperature of the general air of the room was often above 65°, and very frequently it was below 60°.
THe Plaintiff's complaint was that this heat caused injury to his paper by making it too dry. It was not made out that any harm was done to any kind of paper except brown paper. As to this kind of paper the Plaintiff's case was that it was sold by weight; that if stored in air of a proper temperature and containing the ordinary amount of moisture it increased in weight during storing; that since the Defendants had increased the temperature it had lost in weight and also become brittle, and that he had suffered a sensible diminution of his profits in consequence. Both the Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine and the Court of Appeal considered this case to be established.
The manager of an important firm of paper manufacturers deposed that any brown paper would improve up to 60°, and that some kinds of brown paper would take no harm even at 80°; that between 60° and 80° some kinds would become brittle, but not unsaleable; and that ordinary brown paper would be dried too much, but would not be made unsaleable, by a temperature of 80°.
The Plaintiff brought his action to restrain the Defendants from heating and drying the air in his warehouse so as to cause damage to him in his business. The action was tried by the Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine, and was mainly argued before him on the question whether there was between the Plaintiff and Defendants any contract amounting to...
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Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (formerly Railtrack Plc) v CJ Morris (trading as Soundstar Studio)
...own property to special uses, whether for business or for pleasure." 14 The authority cited in relation to 'abnormal sensitiveness' is Robinson v Kilvert (1889) 41 Ch.D. 88. The relevant issue in that case was whether a landlord, who remained in occupation of a cellar, was liable in nuisanc......
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Bridlington Relay Ltd v Yorkshire Electricity Board
... ... Eastern and South African Telegraph Co. v. Cape Town Tramways Corporation Ltd. [ 1902 ] A.C. 381 , P.C. and Robinson v. Kilvert ( 1889 ) 41 Ch.D. 88 , C.A. applied ... Walter v. Selfe ( 1851 ) 4 De G. & Sm. 315 considered ... (4) That, applying ... ...
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Fearn and Others v Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery
...applied. 25 One aspect of this core principle is that an occupier cannot complain if the use interfered with is not an ordinary use. In Robinson v Kilvert (1889) 41 Ch D 88 the claimant rented a warehouse in which he stored a particularly delicate and sensitive type of paper. Heat rising fr......
- Fearn and Others v Board of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery
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Table of cases
...1649, [2006] BCJ No 2905..................................................................................... 426 Robinson v Kilvert (1889), 41 Ch D 88, 61 LT 60 (CA) .....................................406 Roe v Dabbs, 2004 BCSC 957, [2004] BCJ No 1485 ..........................................
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Nuisance
...at no inconvenience to himself, could have suspended the blasting for a month and avoided causing damage to the plaintiff. 23 21 (1889), 41 Ch D 88 (CA) [ Robinson ]. 22 [1936] 2 KB 468. 23 MacGibbon v Robinson , [1953] 2 DLR 689 (BCCA). Nuisance 407 3) Non-intrusive Nuisances The most comm......