The second defendant owned but did not occupy a property. She granted the first defendant, her daughter, a bare licence to live there. The second defendant paid all the bills and maintained the property and her daughter did not pay any rent. The claimant owners of the next door property complained about the excessive barking of the daughter’s dog. The claimants wrote a letter before action to which the second defendant responded that a landlord was not liable for nuisance committed by a tenant, that she was not personally involved in the alleged incidents and that she was estranged from her daughter. The claimants issued proceedings against the second defendant and her daughter for nuisance. The second defendant served a notice to quit on her daughter and obtained a possession order which she did not enforce. The second defendant did not accept the claimants’ offer of a settlement if she permanently evicted her daughter from the property. The judge held that the second defendant was liable in nuisance to the claimants even though she did not occupy the property from which the nuisance emanated, concluding that liability attached once the owner knew or was deemed to know of the nuisance and had failed after a reasonable time to abate it and therefore if the owner chose to do nothing then she became liable for it with the actual creator of the nuisance.
On the second defendant’s appeal—
Held, appeal dismissed. An occupier of a property was in a different position to a landlord in respect of liability for nuisance. An occupier would normally be responsible for a nuisance even if he did not directly cause it because he was in control and possession of the property. An owner could be regarded as an occupier of property for such purposes even if he had allowed others to live or undertake activities on his land. On the facts of the present case, the second defendant was correctly regarded as an occupier of the property and was both in possession and control of the property throughout her daughter’s residence there and the judge had been right to hold her liable for the nuisance (paras 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35).
Hamish MacBean (instructed by Gabb & Co, Abergavenny) for the second defendant.
Catherine Doran (instructed by PM Law Solicitors, Sheffield) for the claimants.