The High Court found Patrick Shevlin liable for damage to Michael Ambrose’s home after a farm pass on Shevlin’s land impeded floodwater during exceptional rain in February 1994. Ms Justice Dunne ordered a decree for an agreed sum of damages; the judgment does not state the amount.
The flooding followed heavy rain over the weekend of 25 to 27 February 1994. The court found that a stream overflowed after its culvert became obstructed by stones and silt. Water flowed across fields towards Ambrose’s house, which was in a floodplain near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.
Ambrose’s case was that Shevlin had raised the farm pass in 1993, creating a barrier to the water, and that the pipes beneath it could not drain the accumulated water. Shevlin disputed constructing a new road, saying he had maintained an existing pass. The court accepted that a track had already existed but found that Shevlin carried out significant improvement works using hard-core material. It relied in part on a county council warning notice and a farm grant application describing construction of a farm roadway.
The judge found that the works raised the pass so that it acted like a dam during the flooding. Witnesses said water levels subsided after a JCB breached the pass on Friday night. The judge was reluctant to rely on a later engineering assessment of ground levels, given the time elapsed since the flood and the evidence about the effect of breaching the pass.
The court did not consider the exceptional combination of events on Friday night reasonably foreseeable by Shevlin. But it found that the breach was filled in on Saturday without suitable pipes to let floodwater escape. Further heavy rain and the still-obstructed culvert caused the house to flood again. The judge found this further flooding foreseeable and held Shevlin liable for the property damage.
The claim was brought in nuisance and negligence. The judge referred to legal principles on nuisance but did not separately state a finding on each pleaded basis. Because the damages figure had been agreed and the court considered it impossible to distinguish the Friday night damage from the later damage, it awarded the agreed sum. The judgment does not specify that sum.