2. ➢The French term "nuire" (which meaning "to do hurt, or to annoy") is where the
English word "nuisance" originated.
➢Everyone has the right to live in peace with their belongings.
➢A nuisance would be any aspect of disruption or impediment to the enjoyment of
property rights.
➢Stephen claims that an act constitutes a nuisance if it interferes with the
defendant's ability to enjoy his property or annoys him in any way and is not
trespassing.
3. ➢A nuisance, in Salmond's opinion, is an act that entails the unauthorised
discharge of an object into the plaintiff's property and that has a negative impact
on the plaintiff's overall wellbeing.
4. NUISANCE?
➢Unlawful interference with the peaceful enjoyment of one's property or any
related right might be considered a nuisance.
➢Travesty and annoyance differ greatly from one another. In the former case, the
plaintiff's possession of the land is physically interfered with.
➢In contrast, the latter case involves a greater degree of indirect interference with
the plaintiff's property rights.
5. ➢Throwing stones at the plaintiff's property, for example, would be considered
trespassing; on the other hand, playing your radio at an exceptionally loud
volume would be considered a nuisance.
➢Either a specific person's property rights or the property rights of the broader
public may be the subject of nuisance.
6. PUBLIC NUISANCE
➢The Indian Penal Code's definition of public nuisance is declared by Section
3(48) of the General Clauses Act, 1897.
➢A person commits a public nuisance when they do something that puts the
general public in danger, discomfort, or common hurt, as stated in Section 268
of the Indian Penal Code.
7. Basically, any action that impedes the public's property rights or any other kind of
right. For example, it was decided in Malton Board of Health v. Malton
Manure Co., 1879, that it is illegal to conduct a trade or business that generates
loud noises because it would be a public nuisance. Individual rights are
unimportant to a public nuisance since the goal is to prevent multiple legal actions.
8. Conditions:
1. The person needs to show that the injury he faced was substantially
greater than what the rest of the public faced.
2. The injury he faced must essentially have been direct, not merely
consequential.
9. The court in K Ramakrishnan v. State of Kerala (1999) ruled that any type of
public tobacco smoking is considered a public nuisance. Smoking satisfies the
requirements for public nuisance status since it is bad for the general population.
The plaintiff in Soltau v. De Held (1851) lived adjacent to a Roman Catholic
church. Every day and night, the church rang its chapel bell. It was decided that the
bells' constant ringing constituted a nuisance to the public.
10. Punishment in public nuisance
The Indian Penal Code's Section 290 addresses the penalties imposed for causing a
public disturbance. As per the regulations, an anyone found guilty of causing
public annoyance faces a fine that might reach up to 200 rupees.
But according to Section 291, if the offender continues to commit the nuisance
habitually, he faces the possibility of a six-month jail sentence, a fine, or both.
11. Physical discomfort
➢In order to satisfy this essential, the following two conditions must be followed-
➢The act must not be within the defendant’s usual course of enjoyment of his
property. In order to constitute an act of nuisance, the defendant must have
committed an act outside the purview of his ordinary enjoyment of land.
➢The act must cause physical/mental discomfort to an ordinary person in the
locality.
12. DEFENCES
Prescriptive rights
➢An unlawful interference in the peaceful possession of the property would constitute a private
nuisance.
➢However, the defendant could acquire the right to commit the nuisance, in the event of the
plaintiff not taking any steps to stop the defendant from committing the act of nuisance.
➢In such cases, the act of nuisance gets legalized ab initio, i.e, it is presumed that the plaintiff
consented to it at its very commencement. However, no prescriptive rights could be acquired in
cases of public nuisance, since public nuisance is a crime and thus prohibited by law.
13. Statutory Authority
➢For an act to come under the ambit of nuisance, it must essentially have been committed
‘unlawfully’. An act committed by a person fulfilling the duty imposed upon him by the
state is considered lawful, and thus, not nuisance.
➢In Vaughan v. the Taff Vale Railway Company, the defendant had been authorised
under a statute to run locomotives. The defendant’s railway was adjacent to a wood,
which harboured inflammable grass.
➢On account of the sparks emitted by the locomotives, the wood was burned down. It
was held that the defendant had not committed an act of nuisance, since a statute had
granted him the authority to commit the act.
14. Remedies
➢The most common way to remedy nuisance is monetary compensation.
➢The object of providing damages is to place the plaintiff in the same position as
he was prior to the act of nuisance.
➢However, the plaintiff may also file for an injunction against the tortfeasor. An
injunction, also known as a restraint order, is a command by the court either
prohibiting the plaintiff from committing the wrongful act (prohibitive injunction)
or ordering the plaintiff to do something in order to cease the wrongful act
(mandatory injunction).
