Water from defendants' fire-plug escaped during an exceptionally severe frost and flooded plaintiff's house. The court held the defendants not negligent as they had taken reasonable precautions against ordinary weather conditions and could not have foreseen the unprecedented frost. This case established the classic definition of negligence.
Facts
The defendants, the Birmingham Waterworks Company, were incorporated by statute to supply Birmingham with water. They were required by their Act to lay fire-plugs in streets with main pipes at least eighteen inches below the surface. The plaintiff’s house was damaged when water escaped from a fire-plug apparatus during an exceptionally severe frost in February 1855.
The fire-plug apparatus consisted of a wooden plug inserted in a neck projecting from the main pipe, surrounded by brickwork puddled with clay and enclosed in a cast iron tube with a moveable iron stopper. The apparatus had been properly constructed according to the best known system and had worked well for 25 years.
One of the severest frosts on record began on 15 January 1855 and continued until after the accident. Ice and snow had encrusted around the stopper, preventing the plug from ascending when the expanding frozen water exerted pressure. The defendants’ engineer explained that the frost caused the water to expand, forcing up the plug, but the ice-encrusted stopper prevented its ascent, causing water to force through the brickwork into the plaintiff’s house.
Issues
The central issue was whether the defendants were guilty of negligence in failing to prevent the accident, particularly by not removing the ice that had accumulated around the fire-plug apparatus.
Judgment
The Court of Exchequer reversed the County Court decision and entered verdict for the defendants, holding there was no evidence of negligence to leave to the jury.
Baron Alderson
Baron Alderson delivered the leading judgment, providing the classic definition of negligence:
Negligence is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do.
He further stated:
A reasonable man would act with reference to the average circumstances of the temperature in ordinary years. The defendants had provided against such frosts as experience would have led men, acting prudently, to provide against; and they are not guilty of negligence, because their precautions proved insufficient against the effects of the extreme severity of the frost of 1855, which penetrated to a greater depth than any which ordinarily occurs south of the polar regions. Such a state of circumstances constitutes a contingency against which no reasonable man can provide. The result was an accident, for which the defendants cannot be held liable.
Baron Martin
Baron Martin concurred, stating:
The defendants are not responsible, unless there was negligence on their part. To hold otherwise would be to make the company responsible as insurers.
Baron Bramwell
Baron Bramwell also agreed, observing:
it would be monstrous to hold the defendants responsible because they did not foresee and prevent an accident, the cause of which was so obscure, that it was not discovered until many months after the accident had happened.
Implications
This case is of fundamental importance in the law of tort as it established the objective standard of care in negligence – that of the reasonable man. It confirmed that defendants are not insurers against all harm but are only required to guard against reasonably foreseeable risks. The case demonstrates that extraordinary or unprecedented circumstances, such as extreme weather conditions beyond normal experience, do not give rise to liability where reasonable precautions have been taken against ordinary risks.
Verdict: Verdict entered for the defendants. The Court of Exchequer reversed the County Court decision, holding there was no evidence of negligence to leave to the jury.
Cite this work:
To cite this resource, please use the following reference:
National Case Law Archive, 'Blyth v The Company of Proprietors of The Birmingham Waterworks [1856] EWHC Exch J65 (06 February 1856)' (LawCases.net, September 2025) <https://www.lawcases.net/cases/blyth-v-the-company-of-proprietors-of-the-birmingham-waterworks-1856-ewhc-exch-j65-06-february-1856/> accessed 2 April 2026
