An in-depth summarised and collated notes regarding occupiers' liability with detailed notes on the legislations (OLA 1957 AND 1984) and case summaries with annotations to important quotes for easy answering of PQs.
OCCUPIERS LIABILITY
INTRODUCTION
Occupiers’ liability familiar in that it resonates a lot with negligence principles.
In fact, occupiers’ liability may best be understood as a special kind of negligence that
applies to occupiers of premises.
A Special Liability Regime
So, what is occupiers’ liability and why does it get its own set of principles and rules outside
standard negligence?
Occupiers liability is a branch of tort law which prescribes the duty of care occupiers
owe to make their premises safe.
If premises are dangerous and cause harm to people who enter them, occupiers’
liability may arise.
Why are occupiers’ subject to a special liability regime and not simply held to the principles
of ordinary negligence? Why have the legislature chosen to enact not one but two statutes
setting out the duties occupiers owe?
As tort law developed, judges struggled to delineate the scope of occupiers’ liability at
common law.
» Judges were reluctant to apply ordinary negligence principles not least because not
everyone who is on someone’s premises has the same right to be there.
Should the occupier owe the same duty of care to a burglar as to a dinner
guest?
Because of these concerns, the common law came up with a complicated set of technical
rules around occupiers’ liability which turned on the status of the entrant.
If the entrant was an ‘invitee’, a high duty of care was owed;
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, if they were a ‘licencee’ a lower duty was owed;
and if the entrant was a trespasser, well the courts were reluctant to impose any duty
at all.
‘Invitee’ and ‘licencee’ ~ were dissolved in favour of a single category – ‘visitor’ – when the
1957 Act was enacted.
But, pre-1957, judges agonised about these distinctions resulting in quite contorted
case law.
And, of course, there was the problem of innocent trespassers.
à It’s all very well being harsh on a burglar but what about a little kid who
inadvertently wanders onto someone else’s land?
Even after the 1957 Act, the judges were far from agreed about adopting a
compassionate stance towards child trespassers – for this reason that the OLA 1984
was introduced.
In sum, the common law made a bit of a pigs’ breakfast of occupiers’ liability so – the
legislature intervened,
~ First to regulate the duty owed to ‘visitors’ under the 1957 Act
~ Later to regulate the duty owed to ‘non-visitors’, i.e., trespassers, in the 1984 Act.
Situations where occupiers’ liability may arise
* A man falls down the stairs of a pub because the hallway is unlit
* A foolhardy teenager dives into a shallow pond in a public park and breaks his neck
* A tipsy customer slips on the floor of a busy takeaway on a wet Friday night
* A burglar trips on the stairs of the premises he is burgling because one of the floorboards
is loose and needs repairing
Liability for the state of the ‘premises’
A distinctive feature of occupiers’ liability is that is concerned with the safety of ‘premises’.
But what counts as premises? By and large, this is common sense.
» OLA 1957, s 1(1) states
‘The rules enacted … shall have effect … to regulate the duty which an occupier of premises
owes to his visitors in respect of dangers due to the state of the premises …’
» OLA 1957, s 1(3) goes on to say
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