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42
Local Management Act, 1855, to relay and ventilate a defective
drain at 29, Rosebury Road. The plaintiffs appealed against the
notice served under the Metropolis Management Act to the
London County Council, who adjourned the matter sine die for
proceedings to be taken in a court of law. With a view to
raising a legal issue, a notice was served by the Council upon
the plaintiffs, under Section 83 of the Metropolis Local
Management Act, to disconnect the drain of 27, Rosebury Road,
from the drain of 29, Rosebury Road, with the result that the
plaintiffs brought the above-mentioned action.
The facts with regard to the drains of the houses were as
follows. The Vestry of the Parish of Fulham had in 1887
approved a plan for the drainage of the houses in Rosebury
Road in pairs. The plan merely showed for each pair of houses
two straight lines (one under each house) meeting at an acute
angle in front of the houses; and another straight line drawn
from the point of junction of the other two, and meeting the
sewer at right angles.
At 27 and 29, Rosebury Road, the drainage was carried off by
two pipes, one under each house, which joined, as shewn in the
plan, in the forecourt, and reached the sewer by a single pipe.
The pipe, however, under 29, Rosebury Road, took the whole of
the drainage of that house together with that from a sink at the
back of 27, Rosebury Road, this connection having been made at
the time the houses were built. The trustees of a settlement
were owners of both houses, who derived their title without any
purchase for value from the original owner by whom the houses
were built.
Mr. Justice Channell held that there was an order for the
houses to be drained in pairs, and that as no details were shewn
in the plans, it might be interred that these had been left to the
Surveyor to deal with, and that he had approved of the connection
of the drain from the sink gulley of 27 with the drain of 29,
consequently he held that the drainage as laid was a combined
system of drainage, laid with the sanction of the authority, and,
therefore, the pipe in question was a "drain" and not a "sewer."