Private Nuisance

In one line

A private nuisance is an unreasonable interference with a particular person's use or enjoyment of his own land.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: a private nuisance is an unlawful interference with a person's use or enjoyment of land, or of some right over or in connection with it, committed by an act or omission of the defendant which causes either material damage to the property or substantial interference with the comfort and convenience of the occupier judged by the standard of an ordinary person; the plaintiff must have an interest in the land affected, the interference must be unreasonable, and damage must ordinarily be proved.

The three essentials

1. An unreasonable interference. Not every interference is a nuisance; the question is whether an ordinary occupier in that locality should be expected to put up with it, and chapter [Nuisance: What It Is] sets out the four factors that decide it.

2. The interference must be with the use or enjoyment of land, or with a right over it. Rights over land include easements such as a right of way, a right to light, a right to air through a defined channel and a right to support.

3. Damage. Either material damage to property, or substantial interference with comfort and convenience. Where the plaintiff sues on the interference with an easement, damage is presumed.

Who may sue and who may be sued

Who may sue. The occupier of the land, and an owner out of occupation where the nuisance causes permanent injury to his reversionary interest. A mere licensee without any interest in the land ordinarily cannot.

Who may be sued. The creator of the nuisance, whether or not he is in occupation; the occupier who continues or adopts a nuisance created by somebody else, including a predecessor, a trespasser or nature, once he knows of it and fails to abate it; and the landlord where he authorised the nuisance, or where it existed at the date of letting and he knew of it, or where he undertook to repair.

The kinds of interference

By encroachment, as where roots or branches spread across the boundary.

By physical injury to the land or buildings, as by vibration, fumes that kill crops, or water that undermines a wall.

By interference with comfort, as by noise, smell, smoke, dust or heat.

By interference with an easement or a natural right, as by obstructing a right of way, blocking light through a defined aperture, or withdrawing support from the neighbour's soil.

The rules that decide difficult cases

Malice may make a reasonable use unreasonable. As chapter [The Mental Element in Tort] explains, motive is generally irrelevant, but in nuisance an act done on one's own land for the purpose of annoying a neighbour may be held unreasonable when the same act done for an ordinary purpose would not.