Nuisance

Malone v Laskey 1907

Shows the importance of legal standing

• Company rented a house for one of their managers to live in.

• Wife of the manager was injured when a bracket in a toilet fell on her head caused by vibration of machinery.

• Machinery was on the D’s property

• COA held that wife could not make a claim of nuisance as she had no interest in the property.

CF Khorasandjian v Bush [1993]

Case set the boundaries of legal standing.

• case was brought by the daughter of the owner of the property.

• Action sought to obtain an injunction against the man who was harassing her including making nuisance phone calls to her at her father’s property.

• County Court granted an injunction preventing the D was harassing, pestering or communicating with the claimant.

• COA held the injunction should remain unaltered, they argued the telephone harassment was covered by the tort of private nuisance because it was an actionable interference with the ordinary and reasonable use or enjoyment of the fathers property where she was currently present.

• Usually daughters and sons can’t make claims.

• (Before the protection from the Harassment Act 1997)

• Private nuisance as the time was the only way to protect the daughter, butchered the law in order to do so.

McKenna v British Aluminium [2002]

• brought by 30 children in regard to the noise of the factory.

• Judge refused the  D’s application to strike out the claims on the basis that the children did not have an interest in the land.

• However judge also said there was indeed a case that Article 8 HRA proceedings would not necessarily be confined to those who had an interest in the property but should probably include those who lived in that property as their family home.

• This was briught under the HRA however if brought under private nuisance Hunter v Canary Wharf remained good law.

This bring the question as to whether the principle in Hunter to have property interest on the land is overly restrictive, does it produce unfair, unjust outcomes.

Per Knight Bruce in Walter v Selfe (1851)

• Suggesting that the inconvenience “ought to be more fanciful, more than one of mere delicacy or fastidiousness as an inconvenience materially interfering with the ordinary comfort physically of human existence, not merely according to the elegant or dainty modes and habits of living, but according to plain and sober and simple motions among the English people”

Robinson v Kilvert (1888)

• ‘[a] man who carries in an exceptionally delicate trade cannot complain because it is injured by his neighbour doing something lawful on his property, if it is something which would not injure anything but an exceptionally delicate trade”. Per Lopes L.J at 97

• The D let a floor of his property to a tenant to be used as a paper warehouse but the Defendant landlord retained the cellar immediately below.

• Tenant bright an action to prevent his landlord from heating the cellar on the ground that the rising heat dried his special brown paper making it less valuable.

• Importantly ordinary paper would not have been damaged.

• Argue the brown paper was abnormally delicate.

• In this case it was held there was no private nuisance.

Cf Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd v Morris [2004]

• CA: suggests concepts of ‘abnormal sensitivity’ was something of the past and a better question was whether it was foreseeable that specific damage would be caused to the specific Claimant.

• Cf again Fearn v Board Trustees.

• Facts:

• Morris had a recording studio and claimed that the sound of electric guitars was being affected by electromagnetic interference from network railway signalling system.

• Network Rail appealed against the finding they were laurel for nuisance and contended that Morris use of the studio was abnormally sensitive and to the waves and was not protected by the law of nuisance as he was involved in extraordinary use of commercial activity.

• Allowing the appeal, the COA found that the modern law of tort has discarded some established detailed rules and requires instead a much broader approach.

• Essentially the COA found that the principle of ‘abnormally sensitive’ was outmoded/outdated. And whether Morris use of the studio was a sensitive use of the studio was irrelevant.

• So the correct test was whether it was foreseeable that specific damage would be caused to a specific claimant.

• It was not reasonable for Network Rail to have foreseen the interference.

Halsey v Esso Petroleum Co Ltd [1961]

Time

• High Court held that a private nuisance was created by noise at night from boilers and road tankers.

De Keyser’s Royal Hotel v Spicier (1914)

Duration

• Piledriving- temporary duration- no complete ban- injunction prohibiting the drilling activity between 10pm and 6.30am.

• temporary duration

• Piledirving at night was held to be a nuisance.

• However rather than imposing a complete ban on activity where the interference is of temporary or occasional nature the court can limit the time of the activity.

• Remedy granted was an injunction which restricted the drilling activity betweeen 10pm and 6.30am.

Kenway v Thompson (1981)

• COA allowed an injunction against a motorboat racing club.

• D owned the club, rather than impose a complete ban the court qualified the injunction by limiting the time the activity can take place.

Fears and others v The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023]

• New gallery mean that those who went to view it could see into he flats next to the building.

• C = those living in the flat.

• Judge at first instance = C actions would not succeed.

• Suggesting that an occupier in this part of London, with a Amex activity and tourist activity should expect rather less privacy than a rural occupier.

• Flat owner appealed: COA favoured Cs. The fact that people could see directly into the flat and take pictures resulted in a substantial interference.

• Affected flats ordinary use of enjoyment.

Wheeler v JJ Sanders Ltd [1996] CA

• C bought houses with outbuildings and converted the latter into holiday cottages.

• Neighbouring land = farm owner (D) of pig farm.

• Applied and got planning permission to increase the number of pigs on the farm and to build new sheds to house pigs.

• One of the sheds were only 11ms from the cottage = smell.

• C brought injunction to stop D from using the shed for pigs.

• Despite obtaining planning permission, COA agreed with the C that this was an actionable nuisance and granted the injunction.

PLANNING PERMISSION DOES NOT ALTER THE NATURE OF LOCALITY.

Coventry v Lawrence [2014] SC

• 2006 Cs bought a bungalow in a rural area but still close to an existing speedway stadium. (Since 1970s).

• The permissions to race on that land were still active.

  • SC on appeal agreed with the OG trial judges that an injunction could be granted against what was a noise nuisance in a rural setting.

  • Sometimes planning permission can affect the nature of locality.

Gillinghma Borough Council v Medway (Chatham) Dock Co Ltd [1993] QBD

Planning permission of a commercial nature was deemed to have changed the nature of locality.

Facts:

• Previously disused dockyard was taken over and developed → increased traffic through a residential area= disruptive.

  • Held: There was a planning permission = now wholly commercial in its character- C could not argue.

Barr v Biffa [2012]

Permits d nit make an unreasonable activity reasonable.

• C live near the Ds waste tipping site.

• Site was lawfully operated for many years.

• D obtained a new management waste permit, allowing them to use the site for a new type of pre-treated waste.

• According to the C it created a new strong smell.

  • COA: In favour of the C, the new waste was not reasonable.

  • PERMIT DID NOT CHNAGE THE NATURE OF LOCALITY.

Baxter v Camden LBC (No2) [2001]

• Tenant of a 1st floor flat within an old converted house complained of a continuing noise form the flats above and below her.

• Complaints made to Council who made the property.

• Done so with inadequate soundproofing in the 1970s.

• Claim= dismissed.

• COA LJ Tuckey: returned to the concept that occupiers of low cost, high density housing must b expected to tolerate high levels of noise from their neighbours than other in more substantial and spacious premises.= Inequity.