Capital & Counties plc v Hampshire County Council [1997] 2 All ER 865

• In cases 1 & 2 R (fire brigades) were held liable for negligence where they had turned off sprinkler systems in properties which later caught fire and were destroyed.

• In case 3 R was not held liable where it had extinguished fire at one property and failed to investigate if an adjacent property was affected, which as a result suffered fire damage.

• In 4th case, where R failed to put out a fire due to lack of water and Plaintiff claimed that the statutory duty to act = duty of care, judge struck out the claim of negligence on the basis of no cause of action.

• CA upheld all these rulings.

  • It held that the claims in cases 1 and 2 should succeed since there was no immunity where the PA themselves created the danger.

  • Case 3 claim should fail because there was no duty of care by R to adjacent properties to those to which they were called.

  • Case 4 claim should fail because the statutory duty did not create a duty of care.

• CA also said that R was under no duty of care to help and that mere attendance at scene of emergency did not create required proximity.

Judge LJ

• Reliance is not sufficient to create a duty of care. It is not a recognised category that emergency services owe positive duties to help and therefore case fails on step 3 of Bridge’s test in Caparo.

• It also fails step two (proximity) since physical proximity is not really enough given that the only duty I not to further harm. 

RELATED CASES

• Kent v Griffiths (2)

• Caparo v Dickman