Public & Private Nuisance

NUISANCE

Nuisance, derived from the French term “nuire,” which means to “annoy” or “cause harm,” is the foundation of the tort known as nuisance under common law.

The term “nuisance” refers to any act or omission that results in hereditaments or tenements belonging to another person, or annoyance of the lands, or to the hurting of a person’s right to remain on his premises, but does not amount to trespassing on the property.

According to Salmond, “The tort of nuisance ordinarily consists in causing or allowing without lawful justification the escape of any deleterious thing from his land or from elsewhere into land in possession of the plaintiff, e.g., smoke, noise, water, vibration, fumes, diseases, electricity, germs, gas, animals, and heat.”

If a plaintiff alleges that a defendant’s conduct unreasonably infringed upon his or her rights, the burden of proof rests squarely on his or her shoulders; in some situations, the defendant’s purpose may also be taken into account.¹

Essentials of Nuisance

1. Some wrongdoing on part of defendant
2. Some loss or damages suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the defendant’s action or act,

¹ Wilfred Estey, ‘Public Nuisance and Standing to Sue’ (1972) 10 Osgoode Hall L J 563

PUBLIC NUISANCE

To be a public nuisance, the problem must affect an interest or a right that most people share. Even if it affects how one person uses his land, that’s not enough. Even if it affects a lot of private rights, that doesn’t mean it affects the public.²

Because of the common name, many of the rules of law that apply to private nuisance have been applied to public crime. One of these is that the interference must be big enough to bother a reasonable person

It has been argued that for something to be considered a nuisance, it must be something that occurs repeatedly over a long period of time.

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However, a public nuisance can be the result of conduct that is merely negligent, such as failing to inspect and repair a sidewalk, failing to protect the highway from damage caused by heavy equipment, failing to remove a condition created by another, or failing to prevent a bridge from collapsing into a navigable stream. These are all examples of behaviors that could give rise to a public nuisance.³

“Public nuisance” is a problem that affects so many people or doesn’t care who it bothers, so it’s not fair to expect one person to stop it on his own. Instead, it’s the responsibility of the whole community to deal with it.

2 Harsh Jain, ‘Public and Private Nuisance – A Jurisprudential Analysis’ (2021) 1 Jus Corpus LJ 485

³ William L. Prosser, ‘Private Action for Public Nuisance’ (1966) 52 Va L Rev 997

In the case of ⁴“Dr. Ram Raj Singh v. Babulal”, the defendant built a machine for grinding bricks next to the property of the plaintiff, who was a doctor. The machine for grinding bricks made dust, which polluted the air. The dust got into the plaintiff’s consulting room and made him and his patients uncomfortable. The dust also made the patients’ clothes turn red, which could be seen. It was decided that the plaintiff had suffered special damages, and the defendant was given a permanent injunction that said he couldn’t use his brick grinding machine there.

⁴ A.I.R 1982 All. 285

PRIVATE NUISANCE

This type of nuisance occurs when the interference caused by the nuisance violates or otherwise affects the rights of a particular person or individual rather than the public at large.

⁶Essential elements

1. there is an unjustified interference or intervention in the rights of an individual as a result of the conduct or omission of the other person or
2. the individual’s rights were violated as a result of the other person or entity,interference or intervention through the usage or custom or pleasure of premise or property;
3. the petitioner or claimant has suffered certain damages or losses as a result of the act of interference committed by the tortfeasor.

In ⁷“Ushaben v. Bhagyalaxmi Chitra Mandir” , the plaintiff sued the defendants for a permanent injunction against showing “Jai Santoshi Maa.” The complainant claimed the film was a nuisance because it damaged her religious sentiments by depicting Parvati, Laxmi, and Saraswati as envious and mocking. Injuring religious sentiments or beliefs is not an actionable wrong, the court ruled. The litigants have all rights and can stop watching the movie.

In ⁸“Radhey Shyam v. Gur Prasad”,Gur Prasad and another filed a suit against Radhey Shyam and others for a permanent injunction to stop them from putting up and running a flour mill on their property. It was said that the mill would be a nuisance to the plaintiffs, who lived on the

⁶ Wilfred Estey, ‘Public Nuisance and Standing to Sue’ (1972) 10 Osgoode Hall L J 563

⁷ A.I.R 1978 Guj. 13.

⁸ A.I.R 1978 All. 86.

first floor of the same building. This is because the rattling noise of the mill would make the plaintiffs lose their peace, which would be bad for their health. It was decided that running the machines added a lot of noise to an already noisy area, which made the plaintiffs feel very uncomfortable. This was considered a nuisance, so the plaintiffs were allowed to get an injunction against the defendants.

Thus, a simple and meaningful difference is that private nuisance does not ask an individual or claimant to prove that any personal injury or damages have been suffered by him or her, while public nuisance does.

Private action for public nuisance

The question that comes to mind when we talk about public nuisance is whether a private individual can file a suit for a public nuisance.

To assess this, let’s look at some cases when the person can file the suit.

Physical Harm

There can now be no doubt that the nuisance action can be maintained where a public nuisance causes physical injury.An injury to the plaintiff’s health, as by noxious fumes from

gasoline tanks and a pump, is likewise special and particular to the plaintiff, rather than common to the publi

ecuniary loss

Hart v. Bassett was the first case to say that a plaintiff’s loss of money could be special damage that set him apart from other people.

Delay & Inconvenience

When a public path is blocked, the time and discomfort of a detour affect everybody who uses it. Even while time is money and can be compensated, everyone experiences a similar loss. The plaintiff may be able to show that the delay caused him special expenses of a different kind; if he can, he has established a particular injury.

Rights in Land

It has never been questioned that there is a specific sort of damage, for which the private action will lie when a public nuisance seriously interferes with the use or enjoyment of the plaintiff’s rights in land. This is the situation in which the private action will be allowed to proceed. The

⁹ William L. Prosser, ‘Private Action for Public Nuisance’ (1966) 52 Va L Rev 997

interference itself is, of course, a private nuisance; yet, it is not any less specific injury coming from a public one, and the lawsuit can be maintained upon either ground, or upon both of them.

Access to Land

The right of reasonable and convenient land access is a property right. It’s so appurtenant to the property that it may create a necessary easement over another’s private land. In the first tort case, the plaintiff was prohibited from closing. Deprivation of land access has never been disputed since then.(3 POWELL, REAL PROPERTY 410 (1952).)

CONCLUSION

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was hard to enforce the nuisance law because people who wanted to use the same property for different things often caused problems for each other. Also, the cost of going to court to settle the problem became too high

The idea of a nuisance is straightforward but in constant flux. In the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, citizens were not permitted to suit for the rights that privately affected them for any public nuisance, with a few exceptions. These exceptions included the following: The only legal action they could pursue would be a criminal one for creating a public nuisance, but the situation as it is does not allow for that. I believe that the purview of both private and public nuisance has increased to greater proportions, to the point where the plaintiff is given all of the rights necessary to ensure that he does not suffer even the tiniest amount of injury.

The law of nuisance is very close to not being written down. But it has grown and changed through many different interpretations and decisions. In matters of nuisance, Indian courts have learned a lot from both the English standards and the choices made by the customary law framework, which they have used to set their own precedents. This has led to a good set of laws that makes sure everyone is treated fairly and does well, including the parties and the general public as a whole.

Author: Himanshi Gupta, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us at support@ipandlegalfilings.com or IP & Legal Filing.