Nuisance

The Vermont Supreme Court held that “a sustained and intentional campaign to annoy a neighbor can amount to a private nuisance.” Jones v. Hart, 261 A.3d 1126, 2021 VT 61 (Vt. 2021). The court explained: “Although such campaigns primarily involve only discomfort and annoyance—and therefore cause relatively little harm, as compared to other categories of interferences—they qualify as a private nuisance because the harassment and annoyance is repeated over a prolonged period and the activity causing the interference has no utility.” In this case, there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find that the Joneses committed a private nuisance by engaging in a prolonged and intentional scheme to annoy and harass Hart over a six-year period.”

The Delaware Supreme Court held that Monsanto, the company that manufactured PCBs and sold them every though it allegedly knew they were dangerous, participated in creating a public nuisance even though others released the chemicals into the environment. State ex rel. Jennings v. Monsanto Co., 299 A.3d 372 (Del. 2023).

When a chemical plant release carcinogenic gas into the air, the increased risk of illness without physical harm is not an “injury” cognizable in tort law as nuisance or other tort. Baker v. Croda, Inc., 304 A.3d 191 (Del. 2023).

The Maine Supreme Court held that a landowner may remove encroaching non-boundary tree branches or roots using self-help even if the removal damages the tree. Atkins v. Adams, 301 A.3d 802 (Me. 2023).

The neighbors in the case of Game Place, Tranfield v. Arcuni-English, 215 A.3d 222 (Me. 2019), never got along with each other and quarreled when one owner cut dead limbs on his property to open up a view over the neighbor’s land. The neighbor threatened to erect a high fence to block the view, but instead hired a landscaper who installed 24 trees along the boundary line that were eight to twelve feet tall. The court interpreted a Maine statute that provides that “Any fence or other structure in the nature of a fence, unnecessarily exceeding 6 feet in height, maliciously kept and maintained for the purpose of annoying the owners or occupants of adjoining property, shall be deemed a private nuisance.” Me. Rev. Stat. §2801, and found the plantings to constitute a spite fence since they were more dense than needed to provide privacy and would not have been planted …

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In a somewhat surprising but ultimately understandable case, the Montana Supreme Court held that bird feeding could constitute a nuisance that causes substantial and unreasonable harm to a neighboring owner. Simpkins v. Speck, 443 P.3d 428 (Mont. 2019). In this case, the defendant planted trees and shrubs designed to attract birds and hung multiple bird feeders and also seeded the ground. The birds often congregated on a power line running along the boundary with the plaintiff’s land as well as trees on plaintiff’s property. “Plaintiffs regularly found bird excrement on their property and on vehicles parked in their driveway, endured bird calls from dawn to dusk, and discovered feathers, dismembered birds, and bird carcasses in their yard.” While defendant tried to avoid or mitigate the harm by putting the bird feeders in the center of her land, this was not sufficient to avoid the harms. The Montana Supreme Court affirmed the trial …

Bird feeding can be a nuisance Read More »