Category: nuisance

Cocking and another v Eacott and another [2016] EWCA Civ 140

‘The second defendant owned but did not occupy a property. She granted the first defendant, her daughter, a bare licence to live there. The second defendant paid all the bills and maintained the property and her daughter did not pay any rent. The claimant owners of the next door property complained about the excessive barking of the daughter’s dog. The claimants wrote a letter before action to which the second defendant responded that a landlord was not liable for nuisance committed by a tenant, that she was not personally involved in the alleged incidents and that she was estranged from her daughter. The claimants issued proceedings against the second defendant and her daughter for nuisance. The second defendant served a notice to quit on her daughter and obtained a possession order which she did not enforce. The second defendant did not accept the claimants’ offer of a settlement if she permanently evicted her daughter from the property. The judge held that the second defendant was liable in nuisance to the claimants even though she did not occupy the property from which the nuisance emanated, concluding that liability attached once the owner knew or was deemed to know of the nuisance and had failed after a reasonable time to abate it and therefore if the owner chose to do nothing then she became liable for it with the actual creator of the nuisance.’

WLR Daily, 9th March 2016

Source: www.iclr.co.uk