Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:29:54

From: Robert Stevens

Subject: Innocent trespass

Professor Sugarman wrote

Under UK law, as I understand it (and in my view under Canadian law as well), there is no liability if there is no fault.

In England (I have no idea about the strange practices north of the border) liability for trespass is strict. For what it is worth, if I was asked to advise I'd say that Vincent is good law here too, although I have no case to support that. There are, of course, plenty of other examples of qualified privilege and I have never quite understood the prominence given to Vincent.

2. Some like to argue that the result should be different when the non-at-fault D acts deliberately.

Whatever its moral merits, the law is surely clear that the result is different.

Robert Stevens
Barrister
University of Oxford

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