Nuisance

Question 1

What does nuisance set out to protect

Answer 1

The use and enjoyment of Land without interference

Question 2

How many types of nuisances do we have

Answer 2

3
Public
Private
Statutory

Question 3

Is public nuisance a crime

Answer 3

Public nuisance is a crime, and therefore dealt with through prosecution under the criminal law, but it also comes into the study of tort because there are some cases where parties who have suffered as a result of a public nuisance can sue in tort.

Question 4

What is private nuisance the main subject of tort

Answer 4

The essence of liability for private nuisance is an unreasonable interference with another’s use or enjoyment of land and, in assessing what is reasonable, the courts will try to balance each party’s right to use the land as they wish.

Question 5

What are the elements

Answer 5

● an indirect interference with the enjoyment of the land;
● that the interference was unreasonable; and
● that this interference caused damage to the claimant.
In addition, there are rules about the parties’ relationship to the land, which determine who can sue and who can be sued

Question 6

What is public nuisance

Answer 6

Is one which material effects the reasonable comfort and convenience of a class of people who come within a sphere or neighbourhood of its operations

Question 7

What is private nuisance

Answer 7

Consist of damage to the plaintiff arising from the reasonable enjoyment of Land e.g escaping water tree branch fumes flag pole etc

Question 8

Is there a difference between public and private nuisance

Answer 8

Yes

Question 9

Name the difference

Answer 9

Public nuisance is a crime where private nuisance is a tort under tort. Because public nuisance is a crime it is instituted by a suit of the AG. The same act can be both a public and private nuisance

Question 10

Another difference between public and private

Answer 10

In private the claimant must have a interest in land but in public it is not necessary. Melone v Lasky 1907 the wife and the generator sha they had no interest in lad it was her husband boss that owed it

Question 11

Hunter v Canary Wharf

Answer 11

The claimant wanted to claim damages for the distributing connection of their tv but it was held that there must be an interest to land

Question 12

Another difference of public and private nuisance

Answer 12

In private nuisance a non occupier cannot bring an action for personal damages but in public nuisance a non occupier can bring an action for personal damages

Question 13

Another difference between public and private

Answer 13

Public nuisance cannot be legitimised by prescription but public nuisance or the right to commit private nuisance can be legitimised by prescription

Question 14

Sturges v Bridgman

Answer 14

The claimant, a doctor, moved house and on the premises, he bought and built a shed in his garden to carry out his private practice within. His shed was on the boundary of the property and happened to be next door to a confectioner. The confectioner had produced sweets in his kitchen for many years before the doctor had moved in. The doctor alleged that the noise of the confectioner grinding his pestle and mortar was clearly audible from his shed and that this disrupted his amenity in the form of his enjoyment of his land.

Issues
Whether the doctor could claim loss of amenity when he had ‘moved to the nuisance’ or not. Whether the character of the area or locality as a residential area meant that there was a nuisance.

Decision/Outcome
There was a nuisance, and the fact that the doctor had ‘moved to the nuisance’ was no defence to the nuisance itself. Nor was there an easement acquired by the confectioner through long usage that entitled him to continue with his actions. What constitutes a nuisance was to be decided on a case to case basis, and it is necessary to consider the particular locality itself. What is not a nuisance in one area may well be a nuisance in another and it would be unjust if the nuisance maker had been permitted to continue with the nuisance indefinitely and without power of law to interrupt if this was to be considered a right acquired by long usage.

Question 15

Explain locality as an element in nuisance

Answer 15

Where the interference takes place will have an important bearing on whether it is reasonable; a land- owner in the centre of London cannot reasonably expect the same level of peace and quiet as one in the depths of the country. This point was made in St Helens Smelting Co v Tipping Ltd (1865). The claimant’s estate was situated in an industrial area, and, in deciding whether the fumes from the defendant’s copper works amounted to nuisance, the House of Lords distinguished between nui- sances causing actual injury to property, as in this case, and nuisances causing personal discomfort. In the latter case, claimants should be prepared to put up with the level of discomfort common to the area in which they are situated. However, claimants were not expected to put up with actual damage to their land resulting from the normal activities of the locality, and so an injunction was granted.
Legal principle
Whether interference with land is reasonable may depend on the locality, and what is a nuisance in a quiet residential area may not be a nuisance in an industrial location.

Question 16

Abola v ijoma

Answer 16

The plaintiffs sued because of the defendants chicken we’re bringing bad smell which left the place smell. The high agreed and said it was a nuisance

Question 17

Locality case

Answer 17

Where the interference takes place will have an important bearing on whether it is reasonable; a land- owner in the centre of London cannot reasonably expect the same level of peace and quiet as one in the depths of the country. This point was made in St Helens Smelting Co v Tipping Ltd (1865). The claimant’s estate was situated in an industrial area, and, in deciding whether the fumes from the defendant’s copper works amounted to nuisance, the House of Lords distinguished between nui- sances causing actual injury to property, as in this case, and nuisances causing personal discomfort. In the latter case, claimants should be prepared to put up with the level of discomfort common to the area in which they are situated. However, claimants were not expected to put up with actual damage to their land resulting from the normal activities of the locality, and so an injunction was granted.
Legal principle
Whether interference with land is reasonable may depend on the locality, and what is a nuisance in a quiet residential area may not be a nuisance in an industrial location.

Question 18

Duration as a elements you need

Answer 18

How long the nuisance goes on for and when it happens will also affect whether it is considered unreasonable or not. Something noisy may be reasonable if it happens in the middle of the day, for example, but not late at night or early in the morning. In Halsey v Esso Petroleum (1961), the court found that the noise caused by filling petrol tankers was reasonable and so not a nuisance at 10am, but was a nuisance when it happened at 10pm

Question 19

Miller v Jackson

Answer 19

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Cases
Miller v Jackson - 1977
1491 words (6 pages) Case Summary

29th Sep 2021 Case Summary Reference this In-house law team
Jurisdiction / Tag(s): UK Law
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Law Case Summary

Miller v Jackson [1977] 1 QB 966

Introduction
The case of Miller v Jackson1 is a case on nuisance. The tort of nuisance provides that there will be a remedy where an indirect and unreasonable interference to land has occurred.2 Where a nuisance is found to have occurred the court may grant an injunction restricting the nuisance from occurring in the future. Alternatively, the court may determine that the appropriate remedy is an award of damages.

Prior to Miller v Jackson3 it had previously been held that there was no defence of ‘coming to the nuisance’.4 For example, in Sturges v Bridgman5 the defendant was a confectioner who had operated in the premises for more than 20 years. A doctor moved in next door and found that the noise and vibrations from the confectioner’s work interfered with his practice. The court upheld the doctor’s request for an injunction even though the doctor had known about the confectioner’s work. However, public policy may have a role to play. In Bolton v Stone6 the pursuit of cricket was held to have benefit to society which negated negligence where the damage only arose exceptionally.

In relation to the grant of an injunction, the prior case law indicated that damages would only be granted in lieu of injunction in exceptional circumstances.7 These circumstances were that the injury was small and capable of being estimated in money, the injury could be adequately compensated by a small money payment and the case is one in which it would be oppressive to the defendant to grant an injunction.8

Issues
The issues for the Court of Appeal in Miller v Jackson9 were whether the defendants were guilty of negligence and/or nuisance; whether there was a defence of ‘coming to the nuisance’; whether policy reasoning should impact the granting of an injunction.

Facts
The defendants had played cricket on a particular area of land for around 70 years. The neighbouring land was then sold for development and houses built on it. The plaintiffs bought one of the houses and then complained of negligence and nuisance from cricket balls landing on the property. The plaintiffs suffered damage to property and also complained that the activities of the cricketers prevented the enjoyment of their land and caused nervous damage. The first instance judge granted the injunction sought.

Outcome/Decision
By a majority, the Court of Appeal found that the cricket club was guilty of both negligence and nuisance (Lord Denning dissenting). However, in relation to the injunction the majority considered that no injunction should be awarded (Geoffrey Lane LJ dissenting).

Lord Denning took the view that cricket was an important public interest which ought to be balanced against the private interest of the plaintiffs. He stated that “The houses ought to have been so sited as not to interfere with the cricket”.10 Lord Denning considered that the plaintiffs were newcomers who had come to the nuisance and that this provided a defence to nuisance and stated that: “The building of the house does not convert the playing of cricket into a nuisance when it was not so before.”11 Furthermore, Lord Denning viewed cricket as a reasonable use of the land.

However, Geoffrey Lane LJ and Cumming-Bruce LJ considered the Court of Appeal to be bound by the decision in Sturges v Bridgman12 that it is no defence that the plaintiff came to the nuisance.

On the injunction point Geoffrey Lane LJ considered that the continuation of the nuisance could not be adequately remedied by damages. However, Lord Denning and Cumming-Bruce LJ took the view that public policy considerations outweighed the private rights of the plaintiffs and therefore a remedy of damages was sufficient in the circumstances. Lord Denning stressed that an injunction is a discretionary remedy and stated that: “I am of the opinion that the public interest should prevail over the private interest”.13

The final result was therefore that the defendant cricket club was able to continue playing cricket on the ground and only had to pay damages to the plaintiffs for any loss they incurred.14

Impact
Miller v Jackson15 confirmed that there is no defence that the plaintiff came to the negligence. However, the Court of Appeal appeared to depart from earlier case law on the injunction point, viewing an injunction as a discretionary remedy rather than a remedy for nuisance to be departed from only in exceptional circumstances. Public policy was not able to negate a finding of negligence or nuisance but it was able to militate against the grant of an injunction.16 The case therefore paved the way for a balancing of interests between the parties.17

Further cases have followed Miller v Jackson18 in finding that there will be no defence that the claimant came to the nuisance. For example, in Kennaway v Thompson19 the claimant was able to sue for an injunction after building her house next to a lake which was used by a water-skiing and motorboat club. More recently, in Coventry v Lawrence20 the Supreme Court restored an injunction originally granted at first instance after the claimants had moved in to a bungalow near to a speedway track on which motorbikes and stock cars had raced since 1975. As the majority had done in Miller v Jackson21 the court considered that the character of a neighbourhood could not be defined by the nuisance, and no defence existed merely because the nuisance had occurred prior to the claimant coming to it.22 However, the judgment of the court also followed Miller v Jackson23, not only on the injunction point, but also on applying a more relaxed approach to the granting of an injunction. Unlike cases prior to Miller v Jackson24 it was considered that the court does have an unfettered discretion to award damages in lieu of an injunction.25

Ultimately therefore, the case of Miller v Jackson26 did not change the law by providing a new defence to nuisance, as this was rejected by the majority.27 However, it did provide for more flexibility in the law when considering whether to grant an injunction and allowed public policy to play a greater role in this regard.

Footnotes
1 Miller v Jackson 1977 1 QB 966

2 K Horsey and E Rackley, Tort Law (2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2011) p 489

3 Miller v Jackson (n1)

4 Horsey and Rackley (n2) p 511

5 Sturges v Bridgman (1879) LR 11 Ch D 852

6 Bolton v Stone 1951 AC 850

7 S Deakin, A Johnston and B Markesinis, Markesinis and Deakin’s Tort Law (7th Edition, Oxford University Press, 2013) p 449; Shelfer v City of London Electric Lighting Co 1895 1 Ch 287

8 Sturges v Bridgman (n5) at 322-333

9 Miller v Jackson (n1)

10 Miller v Jackson (n1) 976

11 Miller v Jackson (n1) 981

12 Sturges v Bridgman (n5)

13 Miller v Jackson (n1) 982

14 N J McBride and R Bagshaw, Tort Law (3rd Edition, Longman, 2008) p 84

15 Miller v Jackson (n1)

16 Deakin, Johnston and Markesinis (n7) p 448

17 A Samuels, “Developments that Cause a Nuisance: The Legal Significance of the Grant of Planning Permission” (2004) JPL 394, 396

18 Miller v Jackson (n1)

19 Kennaway v Thompson 1981 QB 88

20 Coventry v Lawrence 2014 UKSC 13

21 Miller v Jackson (n1)

22 D Howarth, “Noise and Nuisance” (2014) CLJ 247, 248

23 Miller v Jackson (n1)

24 Miller v Jackson (n1); see (n7)

25 K Horsey and E Rackley, Kidner’s Casebook on Torts (13th Edition, Oxford University Press, 2015) p 443

26 Miller v Jackson (n1)

27 J Segan, “Of Cricket Balls and Velux Windows – A Victory for Lord Denning and the Common Law Right to Hit a Good Six” (2014) Sports Law Bulletin, available at Click here

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Question 20

Sensitivity define

Answer 20

Traditionally, a defendant is not responsible for damage which occurs solely because the claimant, or the claimant’s situation, is abnormally sensitive. In Robinson v Kilvert (1889), the claimant occu- pied the ground floor of the defendant’s premises, using it to store brown paper. The defendant’s business, carried on in the basement of the same building, involved making paper boxes. This needed a hot, dry atmosphere. The heating used by the defendant in the cellar made the claimant’s floor hot too, which dried out the brown paper, reducing its value. The claimant sued in nuisance, but the court found that brown paper was exceptionally delicate. As the heat was not sufficient to dam- age paper generally and it had not inconvenienced the claimant’s workmen, the damage was due more to the sensitivity of the paper than to the defendant’s activities, so there was no nuisance

Question 21

Malice

Answer 21

Spite or ill motive Malice here means a bad motive. Where a defendant acts with malice, that may be relevant to the question of reasonableness, in that it may make what would have been reasonable conduct unreasonable.
The case of Christie v Davey (1893) illustrates this point. The claimant was a music teacher, and held musical parties in his house. The defendant, his next door neighbour, deliberately tried to disturb both lessons and parties by blowing whistles, banging trays, shrieking and hammering on the wall. The court held that this malicious motive made the defendant’s conduct unreasonable
Elements of the tort
293

             Chapter 13 Nuisance 294 and a nuisance. Had he not been trying to disturb the lessons, he might have had the right to make a noise, just as the claimant did with his lessons and parties. Another example is Hollywood Silver Fox Farm Ltd v Emmett (1936). The claimant bred foxes on his land. The defendant was a neighbour and, after a disagreement with the claimant, told his son to shoot his gun in the air while standing close to the claimant’s land in order to frighten the vixens so that they would not breed. The claimant’s action succeeded, for while the defendant was entitled to go shooting for the purposes of hunting game, his malicious motive rendered his activity an unreasonable interference with his neighbour’s enjoyment of his land.

Question 22

Who can be sued

Answer 22

Occupiers
Trespassers
Owners
Third party

Question 23

Volitile fit injuria

Answer 23

A person who has consented cannot complain

Question 24

Defence to nuisance

Answer 24

Statutory authority if it’s resulted from an act which was authorised by statute

Question 25

What does the the defence of De minims non curat nux

Answer 25

It mean the law does not deal with trivialities. It is not a offence because the plaintiffs said so. Is it an industrial area bliss v hall. Bliss v Hall. In this case, the defendants managed a factory for three years and during this time smoke, smell and other remittances came from the factory. The plaintiff moved into a house near the factory. In action against the defendant, the latter raised the defence that it (the factory) had been there before the plaintiff. The court held that a defence that an activity has been going on before an action is brought to halt the activity is inapplicable as the plaintiff too, had his right: one of which was the right to clean air.

Question 26

Prescription

Answer 26

If the plaintiffs have stayed long enough without complaint

Question 27

Remedies

Answer 27

Injunction
Damages
Self help or abatement

Question 28

Continuing a nuisance

Answer 28

occupier of land can also be liable for nuisance caused by naturally arising hazards, providing they are aware of their existence and fail to take reasonable precautions (often known as continuing a nuisance, as opposed to creating one). This was the case in Leakey v National Trust (1980). The defendants occupied land on which there was a large, naturally occurring mound known as Burrow Mump. After one very hot summer, they were aware that the area could be affected by landslides because of the earth drying out, but they took no precautions against this. A landslide did occur, casting earth and tree roots onto neighbouring land, and the defendants refused to remove the debris. The courts held that they were liable for the nuisance, even though they had not actually done anything to cause it, but had merely failed to prevent it. It was made clear, however, that where the defendant has not actually caused the problem, only failed to do something about it, the law will take account of that fact in what it requires the defendant to do, and will take into account the defendant’s resources. According to Lord Wilberforce, ‘The standard ought to be to require of the occupier what is reasonable to expect of him in his individual circumstances’.

Question 29

Continuing a nuisance

Answer 29

Goldman v Hargrave [1967] Ch 645 Privy Council
Facts
A 100 foot red gum tree on the defendant’s land was struck by lightning and caught fire. The following morning the defendant contacted a tree feller to cut down the tree saw it into sections. The wood was still smouldering and the defendant failed to douse it with water to eliminate the risk of fire. Over the next few days the weather became very hot and reignited the fire which spread to neighbouring property.
Held:
The defendant was liable for the naturally occurring danger that arose on his land as he was aware of the danger and failed to act with reasonable prudence to remove the hazard

Question 30

Unreasonableness

Answer 30

Unreasonableness
The interference caused by the defendant to the claimant’s enjoyment of their land will only amount to nuisance if it can be considered unreasonable. The basic premise is that if we are all to live together there must be give and take, but interference which goes beyond the normal bounds of acceptable behaviour will be unreasonable. This principle can be seen in Southwark London Borough Council v Mills (1999). Here the council had converted a house into flats and the claim- ant lived in one of them. She sued the council, claiming that the building was poorly sound-proofed and she was troubled by the everyday noise generated by the occupants of other flats. The House of Lords held that the ordinary use of residential premises could not amount to a nuisance; there was nothing unusual about the way the building had been converted and the noise was normal for such a residential building.
In deciding whether an interference is unreasonable, the courts will take into account all the circumstances, and, in particular, the following factors.

Question 31

Elements under unreasonablenesses

Answer 31

Locality
Sensitivity
Malice
Duration

Question 32

Can a private individual bring a action in public tort

Answer 32

Public nuisance, as we said in the introduction to this chapter, is a crime, and those who commit it are generally dealt with by the criminal law, rather than being sued by individuals who are affected by the nuisance. However, there are occasions when a party affected by a public nui- sance can sue in tort, and this is the situation that we will be looking at in this section. In some ways it is unfortunate that this crime has been labelled public nuisance, since it is actually quite different from the tort of private nuisance. It need not have any connection with the use of land, either by defendant or claimant, and is as likely to arise from a single act as from a continuing situation.
The leading definition of public nuisance comes from the case of Attorney-General v PYA Quarries (1957). The defendants used a blasting system in their quarry which caused noise and vibrations, and threw out dust, stones and splinters, which affected people living nearby. The Court of Appeal held that this could amount to a public nuisance, which it defined as any nuisance which ‘materially affects the reasonable comfort and convenience of a class of Her Majesty’s subjects’.
This definition has been taken to include a whole range of activities which endanger the public, cause them inconvenience or discomfort, or prevent them exercising their rights. Examples include picketing on a road (Thomas v NUM (1985)); blocking a canal (Rose v Miles (1815)); obstructing a highway by queuing on it (Lyons v Gulliver (1914)); causing noise and disrupting traffic through a badly organised pop festival (Attorney-General of Ontario v Orange Productions Ltd (1971)); and making obscene telephone calls to large numbers of women (R v Johnson (Anthony Thomas) (1996)).
How many people have to be affected in order for them to amount to ‘a class of Her Majesty’s subjects’? This question was examined in PYA Quarries, where, as there were only 30 houses nearby, the quarry owners argued that they were too few for the problem to amount to a public nuisance. The court stated that the test was whether the nuisance is ‘so widespread in its range or so indiscriminate in its effect that it would not be reasonable to expect one person to take proceed- ings on his own responsibility to put a stop to it, but that it should be taken on the responsibility of the community at large’. The court explained that this would not be the case where only two or three people were affected by it, but agreed that the 30 householders in the case before them were enough. Beyond that, they declined to give guidelines on numbers and said that the issue of whether the number of people affected by a nuisance amounts to a class is a question of fact, to be examined in each case. The case also establishes that it is not necessary to prove that every

             rt t a ac ct ti io member of a class has been affected by the nuisance, so long as it can be shown that a representa- tive cross-section has been affected.

Question 33

Benjamin v Storr

Answer 33

Benjamin v Storr (1874). The claimant kept a coffee house in the Covent Garden area of London, and the defendant regularly left his horses and carts outside, obstructing the highway and blocking out light from all the shops in the row. The nuisance affected all the shopkeepers, but as a result of the nature of the claimant’s business he was able to prove that he had suffered special damage because the smell of the horses put his customers off.

Public nuisance being special to you