Law:

Section:

(a) Tort--- ----Private nuisance---Limitation period for bringing action---Continuing nuisance---Scope---Oil from an oil spill at sea reached claimants' land and it was never removed or cleaned up---Claimants brought action for private nuisance---Question as to whether there was continuing nuisance---Held, that one-off oil spill did not represent a continuing nuisance regardless of the continued presence of the oil on the claimants' land---No continuing nuisance existed in the present case because, outside the claimants' land, there was no repeated activity by the defendants or an ongoing state of affairs for which the defendants were responsible that was causing continuing undue interference with the use and enjoyment of the claimants' land---Oil leak was a one-off event or an isolated escape, and the oil pipe was no longer leaking after (first) six hours---Cause of action accrued and was complete once the claimants' land had been affected by the oil: there was no continuing cause of action for as long as the oil remained on the land. On 20 December 2011, during a transfer of oil into a tanker at the Bonga oil field, approximately 40,000 barrels of crude oil were leaked off the coast of Nigeria (the Bonga Spill). While the leak was stopped within six hours, it was alleged that the spill impacted the Nigerian shoreline, causing extensive harm to the local community. Just under six years after the Bonga Spill, two Nigerian citizens (on behalf of thousands of other individuals and communities said to have been affected) commenced English proceedings in the tort of nuisance. The initial defendants included Shell International Ltd and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Co Ltd but four months later, the claimants applied to change Shell International Ltd to another Shell entity - Shell International Trading and Shipping Co Ltd. The defendants objected to the amendments on the basis that they were made more than six years after the oil spill occurred, and were therefore outside the statutory six year limitation period. However, the claimants argued that, because the oil spill had not been cleaned up properly, the damage to their land was ongoing and amounted to…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492