Perry v Kendricks [1956] 1 W.L.R. 85

D, a coach transport company, owned a piece of land used for parking their vehicles. D performed careful and regular inspections of the vehicles. Before leaving a Leyland coach on this land, D emptied the petrol tank and screwed a cap on the entrance pipe. Children would often play on any parked coaches, but whenever sighted were chased away by D’s employees. C, a boy of 10, came across two other boys on the bank of D’s land when heading home from school. The two boys had found the Leyland coach, with the cap removed by persons unknown. They threw a lit match into the petrol tank and jumped back. C had approached the two boys when they threw in the match. The resulting explosion of the petrol tank left him seriously injured.

• Was the coach a ‘dangerous’ object, and if so were D negligent in leaving a coach where children could access it?
• Was D liable for the ‘escape’ of the petrol fumes from the coach if this resulted from the actions of a third party?

The Court of Appeal rejected the claim. The defendants had taken reasonable precautions concerning the disused coach and were not negligent on the facts. Assuming the stored material otherwise engaged Rylands v Fletcher, the immediate cause of the explosion was interference by strangers outside the defendants' control. The court considered that intervention one the defendants could not reasonably have been expected to anticipate and guard against. The exception was not confined to a formally defined category of deliberate wrongdoing; the essential question concerned responsibility for the intervening act. The decision predates later restrictions on Rylands, so it should not be treated as establishing a current right to recover personal-injury damages under that rule.

An escape caused by the act of a stranger outside the defendant's control may fall outside Rylands responsibility, particularly where that interference could not reasonably be anticipated and guarded against. The exception depends on the circumstances and is not an automatic defence whenever a third person is involved.

Perry illustrates the act-of-a-stranger exception through children interfering with a stored vehicle. The occupier's precautions and lack of control over the intervention mattered. A modern answer must also apply the later limits on Rylands described in Cambridge Water and Transco, including its character as a limited form of nuisance protecting property interests. The fact that this historical claimant suffered personal injury should not be used to assume that Rylands now provides a general personal-injury remedy.