DAMAGES FOR PERSONAL INJURY REMAIN RECOVERABLE IN PUBLIC NUISANCE CLAIM

The Claimants Appearing on the Register of the Corby Group Litigation v Corby Borough Council [2008] EWCA Civ 463; [2008] BLR 411

In The Claimants Appearing on the Register of the Corby Group Litigation v Corby Borough Council [2008] EWCA Civ 463; [2008] BLR 411 the Court of Appeal held that it remains possible to recover damages for personal injury in a public nuisance claim. While case law has established that it is not possible to recover personal injury damages in a private nuisance claim, these cases neither expressly nor impliedly overruled those cases in which personal injury damages have been recovered in a public nuisance claim. This being the case, the Court of Appeal held that such damages remained recoverable in a public nuisance claim and it was only open to the House of Lords to depart from that rule. The outcome of any such re-examination by the House of Lords cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. While the claim that the rule should be the same for both public and private nuisance has an intuitive appeal, the Court of Appeal in the present case points out that the scope of public nuisance is broader than private nuisance; in particular public nuisance is not confined to the protection of the use or enjoyment of land. On this basis, it could be argued that the functions of the two torts are different so that there is nothing necessarily incongruous in the conclusion that personal injury damages are recoverable in a public nuisance claim but not in private nuisance.