Environmental Impairment Liability Case Studies

A fire at a relatively small warehouse facility - 2 hectares in size and employing 50 people - resulted in highly toxic waste water escaping from the site.

A shooting estate was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay £237,548 in legal costs after damaging part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Durham

A Somerset school was ordered to pay almost £17,000 in fines, compensation and costs after thousands of gallons of heating oil leaked from a faulty pipe and caused a major pollution alert.

In 2009, the owners of a dairy farm were ordered to pay £18,855 in fines and costs after slurry polluted a two and a half mile stretch of the River Exe near Dulverton.

While carrying out replacement works in the basement of a city centre, multi-tenanted commercial building, contractors inadvertently damaged badly-corroded pipes connecting oil storage tanks to boiler

A fire at a chemical manufacturing building spread to the whole facility, resulting in its complete destruction.

A developer acquired a former chemical works. The site had previously been used in connection with the manufacture of industrial products for a number of years.

The absence of an adequate maintenance programme for an aboveground diesel storage tank led to a breach in the secondary containment, resulting in a gradual leak that reached the sea.