Jalla & Anor v Shell International Trading and Shipping Co Ltd & Anor

Factual and Procedural Background

On 20 December 2011 an offshore rupture at an installation approximately 120 km off the Nigerian coast released an estimated 40,000 barrels of crude oil (“the Bonga Spill”). The oil is alleged to have travelled to the Atlantic shoreline within weeks, affecting land and waterways in Delta and Bayelsa States. Two Nigerian landowners (“the Plaintiffs”) sued two companies within the Shell group (“Company A”, an English-domiciled operator of the tanker, and “Company B”, a Nigerian operator of the installation) in the tort of private nuisance.

The claim form was issued on 13 December 2017, slightly under six years after the spill. In 2018–2019 the Plaintiffs sought to amend their pleadings, including substituting Company A for another Shell entity. Because the amendments were made more than six years after the spill, limitation became central. The High Court rejected the Plaintiffs’ contention that the nuisance was “continuing” and therefore still within time; the Court of Appeal dismissed the Plaintiffs’ appeal. The present judgment is the Supreme Court’s decision on that discrete limitation issue.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether, on the assumed facts, the continued presence of oil on the Plaintiffs’ land constitutes a continuing private nuisance, thereby creating a fresh cause of action from day to day and postponing the running of the limitation period.
2. Consequently, whether the Plaintiffs’ post-limitation applications to amend their claim form and particulars of claim were time-barred.

Arguments of the Parties

Plaintiffs’ Arguments

• The nuisance continues for as long as the oil remains; each day of ongoing interference generates a new cause of action, so limitation restarts daily.
• Cases such as Delaware Mansions demonstrate that failure to remediate consequences of a single event can amount to a continuing nuisance.
• Therefore their amendment applications were brought within the limitation period.

Defendants’ Arguments

• The spill was a one-off event; once the leak stopped there was no ongoing act or state of affairs for which the Defendants were responsible.
• Ongoing damage is not synonymous with a continuing nuisance; treating it as such would undermine the policies behind statutory limitation.
• Delaware Mansions is distinguishable because the encroaching tree roots in that case constituted an ongoing state of affairs, unlike the isolated oil escape here.
• Even if a continuing nuisance were theoretically possible, the Defendants have no control over oil on the Plaintiffs’ land, so the concept cannot apply.

Table of Precedents Cited

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

Lord Burrows, delivering a unanimous judgment, clarified the legal meaning of a continuing nuisance:

• A continuing nuisance requires repeated activity or an ongoing state of affairs originating outside the claimant’s land for which the defendant remains responsible.
• Mere persistence of damage (e.g., oil residue) is not itself a continuing nuisance; it is the consequence of a past, completed tort.
• Accepting the Plaintiffs’ submission would indefinitely postpone limitation, contrary to the statutory policy underpinning the Limitation Act 1980 and its Nigerian counterpart.
• Analogy with Delaware Mansions fails: tree roots remained alive and continued to act on the claimant’s land, whereas the oil leak ceased within six hours and no further defendant activity occurred.
• Linguistic distinctions: “continuing” in the sense that a defendant continues a nuisance (by failing to abate it) differs from a nuisance that gives rise to a continuing cause of action.
• Control over the nuisance is not a pre-condition to liability, but its absence here reinforces that no ongoing act exists.
• Precedent Darley involved fresh subsidence – new damage – and therefore separate causes of action, unlike the single oil-spill event.

Holding and Implications

APPEAL DISMISSED.

The Supreme Court held that the Bonga Spill constituted a single actionable nuisance whose cause of action accrued once, when the oil first impacted the Plaintiffs’ land. There is no continuing nuisance and therefore no rolling limitation period. The Plaintiffs’ amendment applications were out of time. Permission for the Defendants to cross-appeal on unrelated nuisance issues was refused.

Implications are confined to the parties: their claims are limited to damage occurring within the statutory period, and no broader precedent was set beyond reaffirming orthodox principles of continuing nuisance and limitation.