A nice case today about occupiers' non-liability. If I own land next to the highway and do something with it that restricts visibility on the highway, do I owe a duty of care to highway users? No. Highway users take the view (or lack of it) next to the highway as they find it. So a Welsh government was not liable for planting high vegetation next to the highway that caused a car to hit a cyclist. Presumably this also would cover, for example, the person who put up a picture of an attractive naked woman on his house that, like Zuleika Dobson, fatally distracted passers-by at a critical time.
See Sumner v Colborne [2018] EWCA Civ 1006
Odd though it may seem, I suspect this is right. I don't see why landowners' property rights should be restricted where they don't physically impinge on non-visitors' space: in the same way that occupiers don't owe any duty to keep those on neighbouring land safe -- Armstrong v Keepmoat Homes Ltd, QBD (Newcastle District Registry), unreported 3 February 2012.
Andrew
Andrew Tettenborn Professor of Commercial Law, Swansea University
Institute for International Shipping
and Trade Law
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Andrew
Tettenborn Athro yn y Gyfraith Fasnachol, Prifysgol Abertawe
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