TECHNICAL BULLETIN
ISSUE 31
MAY 2019
THINKING ABOUT NUISANCE A RECAP AND SOME RECENT EXAMPLES HILARY GRAYSON BSC EST MAN (HONS) DIRECTOR OF SURVEYING SERVICES, SAVA NIK CARLE FCIARB PARTNER, BROWNE JACOBSON
Recently the RICS commissioned legal opinion as to whether the presence of combustible cladding on a building may be sufficient basis for a cause of action in nuisance against the owner of a neighbouring building. The full opinion is published on the RICS website, but as it comes hot on the heels of Williams v Network Rail we thought this might be a useful prompt to revisit the tort of nuisance. What is nuisance?
physical damage or undue interference thus affecting the neighbouring landowner’s comfortable and convenient enjoyment of his land. Nuisance may be something physical (trees encroaching on land, for example) but can also be intangible, such as smells or noise.
There are two types of common law nuisance – private and public.
Public nuisance
Nuisance is an established tort that evolved principally during the 19th Century with the development of the Industrial Revolution and the need to protect neighbours as land usage became more sophisticated with the expansion of manufacturing.
Public nuisance is traditionally a criminal offence often defined as an unreasonable, unwarranted or unlawful interference, which can be either an ‘act’ or an ‘omission’, which endangers or interferes with the lives, comfort, property or common rights of the general public. A public nuisance can give rise to a civil claim for damages. An example might be where a landlord is in breach of a state’s
Private nuisance
Private nuisance is actionable in tort and gives a person the rights to protection from ‘interference’ of their use or enjoyment of land. The most common acts associated with private nuisance are the physical encroachment on land,
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