{"id":6295,"date":"2018-03-07T09:27:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T09:27:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-06-21T15:34:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T15:34:27","slug":"spicer-v-smee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/spicer-v-smee.php","title":{"rendered":"Spicer v Smee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Spicer v Smee [1946] 1 All ER 489<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>    Fire \u2013 Nuisance \u2013 Continuing State of Affairs<\/p>\n<p>    <strong><u>Facts<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>    The claimant\u2019s property was adjacent to the defendant\u2019s land.\u00a0 As a result of some faulty wiring, a fire broke out on the defendant\u2019s property which eventually spread to the claimant\u2019s land causing physical damage to it.\u00a0 The claimant sued in private nuisance, and the defendant alleged that this could not constitute a nuisance because the act was short lived and not a continuing state of affairs.<\/p>\n<p>    <strong><u>Issues<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>    Whether the fire was capable of constituting a nuisance considering it had not been started as the result of an accident rather than any act of the defendants.\u00a0 Whether the fire could be considered a private nuisance considering it was an event rather than a repeated or continuing state of affairs.<\/p>\n<p>    <strong><u>Held<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>    The fire could be considered a private nuisance.\u00a0 A private nuisance arises out of a state of things on one person\u2019s property which causes damage to, or exposes his neighbour\u2019s property to damage.\u00a0 This was clearly fulfilled by the state of affairs caused by a fire on one person\u2019s land caused by faulty wiring.\u00a0 The faulty wiring had been a consistent state of affairs and it was this which exposed the neighbour\u2019s land to damage by creating the risk of fire.\u00a0 The fire in due course did occur, and did damage his neighbours land.\u00a0 This was sufficient to constitute an ongoing state of affairs and so was capable of being a private nuisance at law.\u00a0 The defendant\u2019s use of his land (by fitting faulty wiring) created the danger of fire, and exposed his neighbour\u2019s land to harm and physical damage in a way that was a nuisance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The claimant\u2019s property was adjacent to the defendant\u2019s land.\u00a0As a result of some faulty wiring, a fire broke out on the defendant\u2019s property&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","tag-uk-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v26.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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