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The rule in Rylands has been approved by the House of Lords in the recent decision in Cambridge Water Company v. Eastern Counties Leather, PLC [1994 (2) W.L.R.53]. The plaintiff, Cambridge Water Company, was a statutory corporation engaged in providing public water supply within a certain area including the city of Cambridge. It was lifting water from a bore well situated at some distance from Sawstyn. The defendant-company, Eastern Leather, was having a tannery in Sawstyn. Tanning necessarily involves decreasing of pelts. For that purpose, the defendant was using an oregano chlorine called P.C.E. P.C.E. was stored in a tank in the premises of the defendant. The plaintiff's case was that on account of the P.C.E. percolating into the ground, the water in its well became contaminated and unfit for human consumption and that on that account it was obliged to find an alternative source at a substantial cost. It sued the defendant for the resulting damages. The plaintiff based his claim on three alternative grounds, viz., negligence, nuisance and the rule in Rylands. The Trial Judge (High Court) dismissed the action in negligence and nuisance holding that the defendant could not have reasonably foreseen that such damage could occur to the plaintiff. So far as the rule in Rylands was concerned, the Trial Judge held that the user by the defendant was not an non-natural user and hence, it was not liable for damages. On appeal, the Court of Appeal declined to decide the matter on the basis of the rule in Rylands. It relied strongly upon the ratio in Ballard v. Tomlinson [(1885) 29 Ch.D.115] holding that no person having a right to use a common source is entitled to contaminate that source so as to prevent his neighbor from having a full value of his right of appropriation. The Court of Appeal also opined that the defendant's use of the land was not a natural use. On appeal by the defendant, the House of Lords allowed the appeal holding that foreseability of the harm of the relevant type by the defendant was a pre-requisite to the right to recover damages both under the heads of nuisance and also under the rule in Rylands and since that was not established by the plaintiff, it has to fail. The House of Lords, no doubt, held that the defendant's use of the land was a non-natural use but dismissed the suit, as stated above, on the ground that the plaintiff has failed to establish that pollution of their water supply by the solvent used by the defendant in his premises was in the circumstances of the case forseable by the defendant.