RW Miller and Co Pty Ltd v Australian Oil Refining Pty Ltd

The High Court of Australia considered a dispute between RW Miller and Co Pty Ltd (the plaintiff) and Australian Oil Refining Pty Ltd (the defendant). The plaintiff sought to restrain the defendant from continuing to operate a pipeline across the plaintiff's land, alleging that the pipeline constituted a trespass. The plaintiff had purchased the land after the pipeline had been laid and argued that it had not consented to the pipeline's presence.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the defendant's pipeline, laid on the plaintiff's land without the plaintiff's express consent, constituted a trespass. This required the Court to consider the nature of proprietary rights in land and the circumstances under which an unauthorised physical intrusion onto land could be deemed a trespass, particularly in the context of a continuous underground structure.

The Court held that the defendant's pipeline did constitute a trespass. Applying established principles of property law, the Court reasoned that a landowner's proprietary rights extend to a reasonable distance above and below the surface of the land. The physical intrusion of the pipeline, even if underground, interfered with the plaintiff's exclusive possession and enjoyment of its land. The Court rejected the defendant's arguments that the pipeline was not a trespass because it did not prevent the plaintiff from using the surface of the land, or that the plaintiff had implicitly consented by purchasing the land with the pipeline present. The Court found that the defendant's actions were an unauthorised physical encroachment amounting to a trespass.