Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

A Song of Fire and Ice: A J Allan (Blairnyle) Limited & Anor v Strathclyde Fire Board

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 January 2017
Date01 January 2017
DOI10.3366/elr.2017.0396
Author
Pages122-127
FACTUAL AND BACKGROUND CIRCUMSTANCES

On the morning of 31 October 2008, a fire broke out in an outbuilding adjoining a farmhouse in Gartocharn, Dunbartonshire.1 The fire was caused by hot exhaust fumes leaking from a flue and igniting the outbuilding's roof timbers. An emergency call was made and the defender's firefighters attended and sought to contain and extinguish the fire. After conducting a visual inspection which included the farmhouse's roof-space, the firefighters were satisfied that the blaze had been extinguished and left the scene. They were, however, mistaken: the fire was smouldering in damp timbers within the farmhouse's roof-space, and in due course it re-ignited, burning down the farmhouse. The pursuers contended that had the firefighters used a thermal imaging camera to check for questionable areas or maintained a regular check on the premises to ensure that the fire truly was extinguished, the farmhouse would not have been destroyed.

At first instance, Lord Brailsford, following Burnett v Grampian Fire and Rescue Service,2 held the pursuers' case relevant.3 The defender reclaimed. In the meantime, another Fire Service case, Mackay v Scottish Fire and Rescue Service,4 had been decided in the Outer House. This case was concerned not with fire but with personal injuries caused as a result of a fall of ice from a roof which the Fire Service had been attempting to clear. In Mackay, Lord McEwan rejected Burnett, holding that Mitchell v Glasgow City Council 5 clearly envisaged that Scots and English law should develop together, and that the Supreme Court's decision in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police 6 demonstrated that the tide of the law had turned against “the creeping extension of liability on public bodies”.7

By the time the reclaiming motion came to be argued, the parties were agreed that the defender owed the pursuers a duty of care. However, they disagreed on the duty's scope. The pursuers, who emphasised that their case was based not on breach of statutory duty but on the ordinary principles of common law negligence, argued that their case was of the type described by Lord Hoffmann in Gorringe v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, namely one where the fire service had “actually done acts or entered into relationships or undertaken responsibilities which [gave] rise to a common law duty of care”.8 The defender accepted that while it did indeed owe a duty of care to the public at large, the scope of that duty was more restricted than the pursuers claimed: it was subject to a duty to take reasonable care not to make things worse, which duty it argued it had not breached. In an appropriate case, it would also be subject to a duty founded upon assumption of responsibility; however, on the facts of the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT