Flooding From Neighbour's Well - Who is Responsible?

[Dorian]

I am a metre lower than my neighbour and I am being flooded from his garden.

He claims it is going underground from an overflowing well. It has never happened in 20 years. It is occurring 24 hours a day, every day for several months.

He claims he is not legally responsible.

Is that true?

There is a possibility he is putting a hose down the well to make it overflow, but I will never be able to prove it. He may have even blocked it to make it flood me since I am lower.

Will I have to live with that flooding for the rest of my life while he lives next door?

[des8]

He is probably liable!
cf*Leakey v National Trust [1980] QB 485 (CA). where it was held "held that landowners are indeed liable for nuisances caused by natural causes ..... which occur on their land, and which they have knowledge of, as long as they fail to take reasonable steps to bring this nuisance to an end."

[Dorian]

Thanks for the reply. I have read a summary of the Leakey v National Trust. If he claims the well is being filled naturally, so it is out of his control, can he absolve himself of liability then?

[des8]

It seems not as it appears he may be liable for the nuisance caused to you by a naturally occurring event on his land as he is not taking reasonable steps to end the nuisance