This Presentation details the specifics of public and private nuisance and give scenarios of each so that readers can fully understand the concepts applicable to business law.

1. PUBLIC AND
PRIVATE
NUISANCE
DONE BY: Nicardo Shirley
Ryon Whyte
Taj-wayne Bailey
Jakeniel Johnson

2. WHAT IS A NUISANCE?
•A nuisance is a person or thing which causes
inconvenience or annoyance.

3. WHAT IS A PRIVATE NUISANCE
• A private nuisance is a civil wrong; it is the unreasonable,
unwarranted, or unlawful use of one’s property in a manner
that substantially interferes with the enjoyment or use of
another individual’s property without an actual trespass or
physical invasion to the land.

4. WHAT IS PUBLIC NUISANCE?
• A public nuisance is a criminal wrong; it is an act or omission
that obstructs, damage or causes inconvenience to the right of
the community. It can also be defined as an act that interferes
with the general community interest or the comfort of the
public at large.

5. EXAMPLES OF THIS:
• Air pollution
• Land noise
• Storing dangerous explosives
• Prostitutions houses
• Individuals cannot sue for public nuisance unless it also gives rise to
a private nuisance.

6. ST HELEN’S TRACKS VS MR. THOMPSON
This is a case which dealt with noise from a motorcycle speedway
stadium and a motocross. Whilst the stadium and track are largely
surrounded by agricultural land there is a single house located quite
nearby. The house had been built in the 1950s prior to the stadium and
track and has been occupied although not by the same people, throughout
the period.

7. DECISION
• The high court found in favour of the appellant, granted an injunction
and awarded damages for the past nuisance. The court of appeal
overturns the decision stating that the actual use of the stadium and
race track should be taken into account when assessing the character
of the locality and moto sport noise was now a characteristic of the
neighborhood.

8. CONT.…
• Mr. Thomson had failed to establish that the use of the stadium
and race track was a nuisance. They appealed to the supreme
court.
• The supreme court unanimously upheld the appeal and order
the injunction to restrain activities that emitted more than a
specified level of noise.

9. PRINCIPLES
The judge addressed the following key points before deciding the case.
The judge uses previous cases such as the case with Gillingham
Borough council vs Medway doc co ltd (1993) which held that a
planning authority can change the character of the area for the purpose
of nuisance in the case of strategic or major development, is no longer
to be followed.

10. CONT’D
• The judge also notes that the residential used pre-dated the activities
creating the noise although the occupiers of the property in question
has changed over time.

11. RATIONALE
Due to the fact that the nuisance was depriving the occupier the right for
enjoyment of the land. A planning authority cannot authorize a nuisance
has that would deprive a property owner of the right to object to what
would otherwise be a nuisance without providing compensation.

12. OUTLINE OF THE CASE - SMITH V. SMITH
(1875)
In this private nuisance case the plaintiff and defendant owned and
occupied adjoining properties, separated in the back by a nine-foot-
high party wall. The windows of the plaintiff’s kitchen, scullery, and
workshop faced the wall from a distance of eight feet. The defendant
added on to his home, raising the wall from nine feet to 26 feet in
doing so obscured the light and air flow that the plaintiff had enjoyed
for 46 years.

13. CONT’D
• The addition darkened the plaintiff’s kitchen, scullery, and
workshop, resulting in the need for the use of gaslight. It
rendered the workshop useless for the plaintiff’s cabinet-
making and upholstering – work which required good light.
Furthermore, it affected his family’s health, forcing his wife
and daughter to leave the home. The plaintiff filed suit,
requesting damages and an injunction.

14. PRINCIPLES OF THE CASE:
• Awarding damages in lieu of injunctions may amount to forcing
people to sell their property rights.
• A land owner is entitled to use his/her property in such a way
which maximizes his or her enjoyment. However the
enjoyment must not unreasonably interfere or disturb the rights
of the adjoining land owner/owners or create a private
nuisance. Therefore a land owner can use his/her property in
any way s/he sees fit so long as they do not disturb or injure an
adjoining land owner.

15. OUTCOME OF THE CASE:
• Sir george Jessel issued a mandatory injunction for removal
of the addition. He explained that the court must exercise its
powers “in such a way as to prevent the defendant doing a
wrongful act, and thinking that he could pay damages for it.
One cannot force another to sell his property rights:

16. CONT’D
• In granting a mandatory injunction, the court did not mean that the man
injured could not be compensated by damages, but that the case was one
in which it was difficult to assess damages, and in which, if it were not
granted, the defendant would be allowed practically to deprive the
plaintiff of the enjoyment of his property if he would give him a price for
it. When, therefore, money could not adequately reinstate the person
injured, the court said, . . . “we will put you in the same position as
before the injury was done.”

17. RATIONALE:
• Sir George suggested that a defendant’s intentions could affect the
remedy chosen by the court. Ignorance of wrong could justify the
substitution of damages for an injunction. However, ignorance could not
justify the defendant’s behaviour in this case: it was inconceivable that
the defendant did not know that he was blocking the plaintiff’s light.

18. DENNIS V MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
• This case illustrates how the court deals with a noise nuisance:
a serious disturbance that constitutes interference to the
ordinary enjoyment of property. It highlights the legal remedies
that you might expect to be available in a noise nuisance claim.

19. OUTLINE
• D (the claimants) owned and occupied an estate about two
miles from RAF wittering, an operational and training base for
harrier jump jets. D claimed that they suffered severe noise
disturbance every time the harrier pilots carried out training
circuits: an average of 70 times a day.

20. CONT’D
• D alleged that the noise nuisance constituted a very serious interference
with their enjoyment of their land and amounted to a violation of their
fundamental human rights. D instituted judicial proceedings against the
defendants, the ministry of defence, seeking a declaration and damages or
in the alternative damages amounting to £10,000,000.

21. DECISION
The court refused to grant the declaration sought but awarded D damages
of £950,000, representing loss of capital value, past and future loss of use
and past and future loss of amenity. It held that the noise from the harrier
jets amounted to a nuisance and constituted a serious interference with the
claimants' enjoyment of their land

22. CONT’D
He court refused to treat the harrier training as an ordinary use
of land and held that although there was a public benefit to the
continued training of harrier pilots, the claimants should not be
required to bear the cost of the public benefit. Appropriate
damages were awarded and deemed as just satisfaction under
the section 8 of the human rights act 1998.

23. PRINCIPLES
• A previous case - moreno gómez, has important implications as to how
section 8 of the HRA 1998 has to be applied in cases where the right to
family and private life has been violated because of the failure of a local
authority to take abatement and enforcement action against a statutory
nuisance that is serious enough to amount to an interference with this
human right.

24. CONT’D
• Section 8 of the human rights act states that the public interest is
greater than the individual private interests – Mr. and Mrs. Dennis
• However , it is not proportionate to pursue or give effect to the public
interest without compensation for Mr. and Mrs. Dennis.

25. RATIONALE
Although the mod accepted that operations at the RAF
wittering caused noise and disturbance to the Dennis’, they
raised a defence that the harrier training was undertaken for the
public benefit and that they had prescriptive right over the land
as D had bought their property at a time when RAF wittering
was already established.