''Dutton v Bognor Regis Urban District Council''

972 Year 972 ( CMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Spring – Emperor John I Tzimiskes divides the Bulgarian territories, recently held by the Kievan Rus', into six ...

1 QB 373 is an

English contract law English contract law is the body of law that regulates legally binding agreements in England and Wales. With its roots in the lex mercatoria and the activism of the judiciary during the Industrial Revolution, it shares a heritage with countries ...

and

English tort law English tort law concerns the compensation for harm to people's rights to health and safety, a clean environment, property, their economic interests, or their reputations. A "tort" is a wrong in civil law, rather than English criminal law, crimi ...

case concerning defective premises and the limits of contract damages. It was disapproved by the House of Lords in ''

Murphy v Brentwood DC was a judicial decision of the House of Lords in relation to recovery for pure economic loss in tort. The court overruled the decision '' Anns v Merton London Borough Council'' with respect to a duty of care in English law. Facts A builder ...

'' and is now bad law except in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Facts

Mrs Dutton sought to recover damages from a builder, Bognor Regis Building Co Ltd, and the local council,

Bognor Regis Bognor Regis (), also known as Bognor, is a town and seaside resort in West Sussex on the south coast of England, south-west of London, west of Brighton, south-east of Chichester and east of Portsmouth. Other nearby towns include Littleham ...

Urban District Council, which had certified her house was sound after it emerged that the foundations of her house were defective because it had been built on a

rubbish tip A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...

. That would have been discoverable if proper checks had been made. Mrs Dutton had bought the building from a Mr Clark, who, in turn, had bought the building from the builder and so Mrs Dutton had no direct contract with either the builder or the council. She settled the claim with the builder for £625 after getting advice that an action in negligence could not succeed, but she continued in an action against the council, and Cusack J awarded damages £2,115. The council appealed.

Judgment

The Court of Appeal held that Mrs Dutton could recover money from the council as an extension of the principle in ''

Donoghue v Stevenson ''Donoghue v Stevenson''

932 Year 932 (Roman numerals, CMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Alberic II of Spoleto, Alberic II leads an uprising at Rome against his stepfather Hugh of Italy, Hu ...

AC 562 was a Lists of landmark court decisions, landmark court decision in Scots delict law and English tort law by the House of Lords. It laid the foundation of the modern law of negligence in common law jurisdic ...

''. It was fair and reasonable that the council should be liable to a later purchaser of a house that its surveyor had negligently certified to be sound. Lord Denning MR's judgment went as follows:

Critique

Denning essentially argues (not unlike ''

noblesse oblige ''Noblesse oblige'' (; literally "nobility obliges") is a French expression that means that nobility extends beyond mere entitlement, requiring people who hold such status to fulfill social responsibilities; the term retains the same meaning ...

'') that if an inspector has a statutory ''right'' to inspect the property under construction, he thereby acquires a ''duty'' of care to inspect carefully. That is to say: a person who has a right has duties attached to that right. But jurists

Mickey Dias Reginald Walter Michael "Mickey" Dias Bandaranaike QC (3 March 1921 – 17 November 2009) was a barrister, academic and author of leading works on jurisprudence and the law of tort. He was the first Law Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, ...

and Hohfeld have shown that rights and duties are ''jural correlatives''.Dias - "Jurisprudence" That is to say: if someone has a right, ''someone else'' owes a duty to them. So here, the inspector has a right (to inspect), and the builder has a duty to let them inspect. The later ''Murphy v Brentwood DC'' case revealed Denning's reasoning in ''Dutton'' to be flawed.

Notes

{{reflist, 2 English contract case law Lord Denning cases Court of Appeal (England and Wales) cases 1972 in United Kingdom case law

Facts

Judgment

Critique

See also

Notes