TORT 115 Strict Liability and Absolute Liability — Law of Torts Notes for Judiciary

Strict Liability and Absolute Liability: Rylands v. Fletcher and What M.C. Mehta Made of It

Both rules dispense with proof of fault, and that is where the resemblance ends. Strict liability under Rylands v. Fletcher requires a dangerous thing, a non natural use of land and an escape, and it admits seven exceptions which between them dispose of most claims. Absolute liability, formulated for Indian conditions in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, requires only a hazardous enterprise and harm resulting from it, needs no escape and no non natural use, and admits no exceptions at all. The second is not a refinement of the first. It is a different rule resting on a different justification.

1. The Comparison

	Strict liability	Absolute liability
Source	Rylands v. Fletcher, (1868) LR 3 HL 330	M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395
The rule	A person who brings and keeps on his land anything likely to do mischief if it escapes keeps it at his peril, and is answerable for the natural consequences of its escape	An enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity owes an absolute and non delegable duty to the community, and is liable for harm resulting from it
A dangerous thing	Essential	Replaced by the hazardous nature of the activity
Escape	Essential. Read v. Lyons: no liability where the explosion injured a person inside the premises	Not required. Harm within the premises is covered
Non natural use	Essential. Rickards v. Lothian: the use must be special and not the ordinary use of land	Not required
Who is liable	The occupier who accumulated the thing	The enterprise, on a duty that cannot be delegated
Exceptions	Seven	None
The measure of damages	Compensatory, on the ordinary measure	Correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise, so that it has a deterrent effect
To whom it applies	Any occupier of land	An enterprise carrying on a hazardous activity
The justification	He who brings a risk onto his land should bear its consequences	The cost of the permission to carry on the activity for profit

2. The Seven Exceptions to Rylands, and Their Absence from Mehta

The exception	What it covers
Act of a stranger	The escape was caused by the deliberate act of a third party over whom the defendant had no control
Act of God	An operation of natural forces so extraordinary that no human foresight could provide against it
Consent of the plaintiff	He agreed to the accumulation, expressly or by implication
Common benefit	The thing was accumulated for the common benefit of the plaintiff and the defendant, as with a water supply to a building
Statutory authority	The accumulation was authorised by statute, and the escape occurred without negligence
The plaintiff's own default	The escape or the damage was brought about by the plaintiff himself
Natural use of land	Strictly not an exception but the absence of an ingredient, the use not being non natural

Mehta removed all of them in terms. The Court said the liability was not subject to any of the exceptions which operate vis a vis the tortious principle of strict liability under Rylands v. Fletcher.
That is the single most important practical difference. In a Rylands case the litigation is usually about an exception, and most defendants who lose do so because they failed to bring themselves within one. In a Mehta case there is nothing to argue about except whether the activity was hazardous and whether the harm resulted from it.

3. What M.C. Mehta Actually Decided

📖 M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395

Facts Oleum gas escaped from a plant of Shriram Foods and Fertiliser Industries in a densely populated part of Delhi, causing widespread injury and, it was alleged, a death. The escape occurred shortly after the Bhopal disaster, and the question whether the measure of liability of such an enterprise was governed by Rylands v. Fletcher was raised before a Bench of five judges.

Held The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher was evolved in the nineteenth century and is not an adequate measure of the liability of a hazardous enterprise today. Such an enterprise is absolutely liable, and the liability is not subject to the Rylands exceptions.

Ratio An enterprise which is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous industry which poses a potential threat to the health and safety of persons working in the factory and residing in the surrounding areas owes an absolute and non delegable duty to the community to ensure that no harm results to anyone. The enterprise must conduct the activity with the highest standards of safety, and if any harm results it is absolutely liable to compensate, and it is no answer to say that it took all reasonable care. The measure of compensation must be correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise, so that it has a deterrent effect: the larger and more prosperous the enterprise, the greater the amount payable.

4. The Reasoning Behind the Departure

The enterprise alone is in a position to know and control the risk. It chose the activity, it designed the plant, it holds the technical knowledge, and the community around it has none of these.
The community bears the risk and takes no share of the profit. A person living near a chemical plant is exposed to a danger he did not create, cannot assess and cannot guard against.
The liability is the price of the permission to operate. It is not a sanction for carelessness but an item in the cost of carrying on the activity at all, and an enterprise that cannot bear it should not be carrying on the activity.
Proof of fault would defeat every claimant. The facts lie inside the plant, the technology is beyond the victim, and an enquiry into what went wrong would take years that an injured community does not have.
The exceptions would swallow the rule. Almost every industrial escape can be attributed to an unforeseen act, a third party, an unusual natural event or a statutory permission, and a rule subject to those exceptions is no protection.
The measure had to be deterrent and not merely compensatory, since an enterprise for which compensation is cheaper than safety will choose to pay.

5. How the Rule Has Been Applied

Indian Council for Enviro Legal Action v. Union of India, (1996) 3 SCC 212, the Bichhri case, applied absolute liability to chemical units whose effluent destroyed the groundwater of a village, and held the polluter pays principle to be part of the law of India. The cost of remediation was placed on the polluter, and the rule was treated as a principle of Indian law and not a borrowing.
M.P. Electricity Board v. Shail Kumari, (2002) 2 SCC 162 applied it to a public utility. A cyclist was electrocuted by a fallen live wire; the defence that a stranger had drawn an unauthorised connection failed, and the Court invoked Mehta, holding the liability not subject to the Rylands exceptions: TORT 107.
The Bhopal litigation proceeded on the Mehta principle, though it was compromised before the measure was worked out, and the curative petition was dismissed in March 2023 on the ground that a concluded settlement is either valid or must be set aside for fraud, and cannot be topped up: TORT 057.
The Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991 gives statutory form to the same idea for hazardous substances, imposing no fault liability with compulsory insurance and immediate relief, without displacing the common law right to full compensation: TORT 081.
The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 requires the Tribunal to apply the principles of sustainable development, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle, and empowers it to award relief and compensation and to order restitution of the environment: TORT 082.

6. Which Rule to Plead

The situation	Which rule applies
A hazardous industry, an escape of a dangerous substance	Absolute liability. Plead Mehta, and plead Rylands in the alternative
Harm to a worker or a visitor inside a hazardous plant	Absolute liability, since no escape is required. Rylands would fail on Read v. Lyons
A public utility supplying electricity, gas or water	Absolute liability after Shail Kumari, with Rylands and negligence in the alternative
A domestic or commercial accumulation: a water tank, a tree, a fire	Rylands, where the use was non natural, together with negligence and nuisance
An ordinary use of land producing an escape	Neither. Negligence or nuisance, the use not being non natural
A hazardous substance within the 1991 Act	The statutory no fault relief for immediate payment, and the common law claim for the balance

⚠ Whether absolute liability has simply replaced strict liability in India

It is sometimes said that Rylands v. Fletcher is dead in India, having been superseded by Mehta. That is too strong, and a pleader who acts on it will occasionally be left without a claim. Mehta was formulated for an enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity, and the whole of its reasoning, the capacity to know the risk, the profit from the activity, the deterrent measure of damages keyed to the size of the enterprise, is addressed to that situation. It says nothing useful about a burst water tank in a block of flats, a bonfire that spreads, a tree that falls, or a chemical stored by a small trader, and yet all of these are escapes of dangerous things from non natural uses of land, and all of them are governed by Rylands still. The correct position is that Indian law now has two rules operating at different levels of danger: Rylands for the ordinary dangerous accumulation, with its exceptions intact, and absolute liability for the hazardous enterprise, with none. What the pleader should take from this is that in any escape case both should be pleaded in the alternative, together with negligence and nuisance, because the classification of the activity as hazardous is a question on which the court may differ from the plaintiff, and a plaint resting on Mehta alone falls with that finding.

7. The Position Stated Shortly

1. Both rules dispense with proof of fault, and that is the whole of the resemblance between them.

2. Rylands v. Fletcher requires a dangerous thing brought and kept on land, a non natural use, and an escape.

3. Read v. Lyons establishes that escape is essential, and Rickards v. Lothian that the use must be non natural.

4. Rylands admits seven exceptions: act of a stranger, act of God, consent, common benefit, statutory authority, the plaintiff's own default, and natural use.

5. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India holds an enterprise carrying on a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity absolutely liable for harm resulting from it.

6. Absolute liability requires no escape and no non natural use, is non delegable, and is subject to none of the Rylands exceptions.

7. It is no answer that the enterprise took all reasonable care, and the measure of compensation is correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise.

8. The justification is that the enterprise alone can know and control the risk, takes the profit, and must treat the liability as the price of the permission to operate.

9. The rule has been applied in the Bichhri case with the polluter pays principle, and to an electricity board in M.P. Electricity Board v. Shail Kumari.

10. Rylands survives for the ordinary dangerous accumulation, so both rules should be pleaded in the alternative together with negligence and nuisance.