Nuisance is a common law tort. It means that which causes offence, annoyance, trouble or injury. A nuisance can be either public or private. A public nuisance was defined by English scholar Sir J. F. Stephen as,
"an act not warranted by law, or an omission to discharge a legal duty, which act or omission obstructs or causes inconvenience or damage to the public in the exercise of rights common to all Her Majesty's subjects".
In English criminal law, public nuisance is a class of common law offence in which the injury, loss, or damage is suffered by the public, in general, rather than an individual, in particular.
Rylands v Fletcher[1868] UKHL 1 was a decision by the House of Lords which established a new area of English tort law. Rylands employed contractors to build a reservoir, playing no active role in its construction. When the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts improperly filled with debris, they chose to continue work rather than properly blocking them up. The result was that on 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst and flooded a neighbouring mine, run by Fletcher, causing £937 worth of damage. Fletcher brought a claim under negligence against Rylands, through which the case eventually went to the Exchequer of Pleas. The majority ruled in favour of Rylands. Bramwell B, however, dissenting, argued that the claimant had the right to enjoy his land free of interference from water, and that as a result the defendant was guilty of trespass and the commissioning of a nuisance. Bramwell's argument was affirmed, both by the Court of Exchequer Chamber and the House of Lords, leading to the development of the "Rule in Rylands v Fletcher"; that "the person who for his own purposes brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril, and, if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape". No right "to enjoy property" exists in UK black letter law, and it is this decision upon which stare decisis is built in the area.
Miller v Jackson [1977] QB 966 is a famous Court of Appeal of England and Wales case in the torts of negligence and nuisance. The court considered whether the defendant - the chairman of a local cricket club, on behalf of its members - was liable in nuisance or negligence when cricket balls were hit over the boundary and onto the property of their neighbours, Mr and Mrs Miller, the plaintiffs.
Sir John Douglas May, PC was a British Court of Appeal judge appointed by the British Government to investigate the miscarriages of justice related to the Maguire Seven and other miscarriages linked to IRA bombing offences.
Aldred's Case (1610) 9 Co Rep 57b; (1610) 77 ER 816, [1558–1774] All ER Rep 622, is an English land law and tort law case on nuisance. The case can be seen as the birth of the ordinary man having a cause of action in certain types of environmental law against his immediate neighbour. The case confirmed a legal right to abate relatively extreme noise and smell, provided it cannot be justified as being protected by way of an easement have arisen such as from the passing of time or custom on the piece of land in question.
Sturges v Bridgman (1879) LR 11 Ch D 852 is a landmark case in nuisance. It decides that what constitutes reasonable use of one's property depends on the character of the locality and that it is no defence that the plaintiff "came to the nuisance".
Robinson v Kilvert (1889) LR 41 ChD 88 is an English tort law case concerning nuisance. It deals with what is sometimes called the issue of a "sensitive claimant".
Hunter v Canary Wharf Ltd [1997] UKHL 14 is an English tort law case on the subject of private nuisance. Several hundred claimants alleged that Canary Wharf Ltd, in constructing One Canada Square, had caused nuisance to them by impairing their television signal. The House of Lords held unanimously that such interference could not amount to an actionable nuisance; the nuisance was equivalent to loss of a view, or of a prospect, which had never previously been actionable.
Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd[2008] UKHL 55 is a House of Lords case in English land law and relates to proprietary estoppel in the multi-property developer context. The court of final appeal awarded the project manager £150,000 on a quantum meruit basis for unjust enrichment because Yeoman's Row had received the benefit of his services without paying for that. The court refused to find or acknowledge a binding contract, prior arrangement with a third party or promise, overturning a £2m award on the basis of a possible lien arising from a promise over the property. The court found a non-binding agreement in principle, entirely subject to the owner's final say to take into account for example their view of the market; this was the basis on the facts on which the parties were proceeding.
Nuisance in English law is an area of tort law broadly divided into two torts; private nuisance, where the actions of the defendant are "causing a substantial and unreasonable interference with a [claimant]'s land or his/her use or enjoyment of that land", and public nuisance, where the defendant's actions "materially affects the reasonable comfort and convenience of life of a class of Her Majesty's subjects"; public nuisance is also a crime. Both torts have been present from the time of Henry III, being affected by a variety of philosophical shifts through the years which saw them become first looser and then far more stringent and less protecting of an individual's rights. Each tort requires the claimant to prove that the defendant's actions caused interference, which was unreasonable, and in some situations the intention of the defendant may also be taken into account. A significant difference is that private nuisance does not allow a claimant to claim for any personal injury suffered, while public nuisance does.
Gillingham Borough Council v Medway (Chatham) Dock Co Ltd [1993] QB 343 is a case in English tort law covering nuisance. The council granted planning permission to Medway (Chatham) Dock Co Ltd to redevelop the Chatham Dockyard as a commercial port, noting that this would have some impact on local residents but authorising it because the economic benefit would far outweigh any potential noise problems. The port's activity called for a large number of heavy duty vehicles moving around the clock, and by 1988 there were almost 750 lorries using the port per day. The Borough Council brought an action against the dock company in public nuisance on behalf of its residents, and the case was heard by Buckley J in the High Court of Justice. Buckley, while rejecting the dock company's arguments that only illegal acts could be public nuisances and that the granting of planning permission authorised the nuisance, held that the dock's activities were not a public nuisance. This was because the commercial dock had significantly changed the character of the area, changing the definition of what was and was not unreasonable behaviour.
Sir Christopher Staughton, PC was an English barrister and judge, who sat as a justice of the High Court of Justice, Court of Appeal of England and Wales and President of the Court of Appeal of Gibraltar.
Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994] 1 All ER 53 is a case in English tort law that established the principle that claims under nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher must include a requirement that the damage be foreseeable; it also suggested that Rylands was a sub-set of nuisance rather than an independent tort, a debate eventually laid to rest in Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.
Easements in English law are certain rights in English land law that a person has over another's land. Rights recognised as easements range from very widespread forms of rights of way, most rights to use service conduits such as telecommunications cables, power supply lines, supply pipes and drains, rights to use communal gardens and rights of light to more strained and novel forms. All types are subject to general rules and constraints. As one of the formalities in English law express, express legal easements must be created by deed.
English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the feudal system established by William the Conqueror after 1066, and with a gradually diminishing aristocratic presence, now sees a large number of owners playing in an active market for real estate. The modern law's sources derive from the old courts of common law and equity, along with legislation such as the Law of Property Act 1925, the Settled Land Act 1925, the Land Charges Act 1972, the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 and the Land Registration Act 2002. At its core, English land law involves the acquisition, content and priority of rights and obligations among people with interests in land. Having a property right in land, as opposed to a contractual or some other personal right, matters because it creates privileges over other people's claims, particularly if the land is sold on, the possessor goes insolvent, or when claiming various remedies, like specific performance, in court.
Den Brook Wind Farm is a windfarm in Devon, England. The windfarm is located 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south-east of North Tawton and 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) south-west of Bow, and comprises nine wind turbines, each 120 metres (390 ft) high. Developer Renewable Energy Systems (RES) received planning consent for the project in December 2009, following a long planning process which included two public inquiries and a judicial review.
Das v Linden Mews Ltd[2002] EWCA Civ 590 is an English land law case, concerning rights of way.
Green v Lord Somerleyton is an English land law and tort law case, concerning easements of surface water/ditch drainage and the tests for nuisance in English law. In this case there was no remedy for the flooding found to be natural and not recently exacerbated by the defendant. The court attached to the properties an old, 1921, easement of drainage passing both land holdings, in this case two common examples of lowland water engineering, dykes controlled against tides by one-way valves, mentioned in the properties' deeds and, duplicatively, established the right by prescription. The dykes lay in the claimant's own land who had failed to maintain them and failed to account for the flows caused by reduction of water extraction from the lake upstream. The claimant had failed to repair the pump and clear ditches on his own land which had been agreed between the previous owners to give channelled drainage from a lake above. It was for the claimant to recognise the danger posed by its waterline being raised in 1954 by the building up of a weir.
Crow v Wood[1970] EWCA Civ 5 is an English land law case, confirming an easement commonly exists for the right to have a fence or wall kept in repair expressed in earlier deeds, which is a right which is capable of being "granted" by law and secondly, as a separate but on the facts, related issue, of the right of common land pasture asserted by continued use.
