The plaintiff in this case was seeking damages from the wrong body.
That’s right.
And in the case of a spontaneous burst water pipe, the body responsible is likely the pipe manufacturer or the pipe installer. The owner might be liable if they could have reasonably foreseen the event.
Regardless, the affected lot has to establish the liability. That can be hard to do that with spontaneous plumbing failure events. They can be pretty unpredictable.
The main point of the linked case was to show that ownership alone is not enough to establish liability. The OC owned the pipes. The OC’s pipes caused a flow. The OC was not liable because the OC could not have reasonably foreseen or prevented the incident. That’s the requirement for liability. Not just ownership.