270 Chapter 9Nuisance, trespass, defamation and vicarious liability
3 John, a building labourer, is employed by a building company. Would the company be liable
for the following? In each case, use a decided court case to back up your opinion.(a) John moves a JCB, which he is not authorised to drive, so that he can continue digging
a trench. He does not notice that the JCB is in reverse and injures a colleague.
(b) John habitually drives a van on site, even though the foreman knows that he has no
driving licence. While driving the van, John knocks over a colleague.
(c) John is authorised to drive a tractor on site to pull trailers. When driving tractors in this
way, John and his colleagues sometimes play a game whereby they deliberately drive as
close to each other as they can. While doing this John injures a workmate.
(d) On his birthday John drives the JCB down the main road to the pub. On the way he
crashes into a car, severely injuring its occupants.4 The Smalltown Sports Centre was taken over by new owners two years ago. The new owners
have considerably expanded the Centre’s activities and the Centre now has three times the
number of members it used to have. The Centre’s car park is not sufficiently large to cater for
all the cars of the new members and so they park around the local streets (where parking is
permitted). For the past 12 months the Centre has run a monthly football competition which
has proved remarkably popular. Generally, about 16 teams take part in these competitions,
which run from midday until 11 p.m. on a Saturday. Local residents have complained about
the noise of these competitions, as several of the teams bring large numbers of rowdy
supporters. The buses of these teams have often parked in such a way that they cut off
vehicular access to a small group of shops. One of these shops, a small builders’ merchant,
claims that their trade is well down on days when football competitions are held as customers
cannot drive into their car park and the builders’ merchants’ delivery vans have been pre-
vented from making deliveries. Advise the owners of the Sports Centre as to any liability they
might have in respect of these facts.5 Dirty Ltd manufactures pesticides. Six months ago Clean Ltd, a manufacturer of wholefood
products, moved to premises adjacent to those of Dirty Ltd. Clean Ltd have encountered
the following two problems. First, a barrel containing a toxic chemical rolled downhill from
the premises of Dirty Ltd onto the premises of Clean Ltd. The chemical has contaminated a
consignment of wholemeal flour. Dirty Ltd claim that they were not negligent in allowing the
chemical to escape from their premises, as the accident was caused by a squirrel eating
through a cable which secured the barrel in place. Second, Clean Ltd claim that fumes from
Dirty Ltd’s furnace are being blown towards the warehouse in which they store their raw
materials and that if their customers discovered this they might not buy their products. Dirty
Ltd reply that they have been emitting the same fumes for 30 years and that any contamina-
tion would be so slight as to be incapable of being detected, even by chemical analysis.
Advise Clean Ltd of any rights which they might have in respect of these facts.6 Jim works as a security guard for X Ltd. One night, whilst guarding X Ltd’s premises, Jim
comes across an intruder. The intruder says that he has accidentally walked on to the prem-
ises and offers to leave. Jim is convinced that the intruder is the person who stole X Ltd’s
safe three months ago. Jim threatens to attack the intruder with a crowbar if he tries to leave.
This frightens the intruder, who runs away. Jim rugby tackles the intruder and punches him
several times. Jim then locks him in a store room while the police are summoned. When the
police arrive, an hour later, it is established that the intruder had been acting innocently
throughout. The intruder has suffered a broken nose and his clothes are ripped. What torts