OCCUPIERS’ LIABILITY IN COMMON LAW JURISDICTIONS:

Duty of Care, Foreseeable Risk, and the Recovery of Damages

A Comparative Study of English and Sierra Leonean Law

BY JAMES MOMODU FORNAH-SESAY ESQ.

March 2025

I. Introduction

Occupiers’ liability is a discrete branch of the law of tort that regulates the duty owed by persons who occupy, control or manage land or premises to those who enter upon them. Its subject matter sits at the intersection of property law and the general law of negligence, and its development reflects the persistent tension between the desire to protect entrants from harm and the traditional common law reluctance to impose too heavy a burden upon landowners in respect of the condition of their property. The result, across the major common law jurisdictions, is a body of doctrine that has evolved from rigid categorical distinctions inherited from the nineteenth century into a more flexible and coherent duty-based regime, shaped in England and Wales principally by the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 and the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1984, and in Sierra Leone by the Law Reform (Law of Tort) Act No 33 of 1961. 

The 1961 Act was enacted in Sierra Leone against the backdrop of the developing English law of occupiers’ liability, and its central provisions closely mirror those of the 1957 Act. Both statutes replace the common law tripartite classification of entrants with a unitary ‘common duty of care’ owed to all lawful visitors, and both vest in the courts a broad evaluative discretion to assess the reasonableness of the occupier’s conduct in light of all the circumstances of the case. This structural convergence makes the two systems peculiarly amenable to comparative analysis, and it means that English authorities carry significant persuasive weight in the Sierra Leonean courts.

This article examines the law of occupiers’ liability across these two jurisdictions in depth. Part II traces the historical origins of the subject in the common law, from the emergence of the invitee/licensee distinction to the critique that precipitated statutory reform. Part III analyses the content and scope of the common duty of care as it now stands under both legislative regimes. Part IV addresses the specific question of the occupier’s duty to guard against foreseeable hazards, drawing on the principles of reasonable foreseeability, the calculus of risk, and the practicability of precautions. Part V examines the assessment of general damages for personal injury, including pain and suffering and loss of amenity. Part VI considers the recoverability of special damages, in particular loss of earnings and medical expenses. Part VII analyses the defence of contributory negligence. Part VIII concludes with an assessment of the present state of the law and its direction of travel.