Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/108/317/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 06:09:01+00:00

Document:
1. In an action at law, damages may be recovered against a person who maintains a nuisance which renders the ordinary use and occupation of property physically uncomfortable to its owner, and if the cause of the annoyance and discomfort be continuous, equity will restrain it.
2. The measure of damages in an action at law against the maintenance of a nuisance affecting real estate is not simply the depreciation of the property. The jury are authorized also to take into consideration personal discomfort which may be caused by the nuisance, and any causes which produce a constant apprehension of danger in their estimate of damages, even if there be no arithmetical rule for the estimate.
3. Corporations are equally responsible with individuals to respond in damages for injuries caused by nuisances maintained by their servants by the authority of the corporation.
4. Corporations may recover as plaintiffs for injuries done to their property by a nuisance, and where the corporation plaintiff is a religious corporation, and its members suffer personal discomfort and apprehension of danger in the use of the corporate property, the corporation may recover for such injuries. A religious congregation has the same right to the comfortable enjoyment of its church for its own purposes that a private individual has to the comfortable enjoyment of his house.
5. Legislative authority to a railroad company to bring its tracks within municipal limits and to construct shops and engine houses there does not confer authority to maintain a nuisance.
6. Legislative authorization exempts from liability to suits civil or criminal at the instance of the state; but it does not affect claims of private citizens for damages for special inconvenience and discomfort, not experienced by the public at large.
was a religious corporation, created under the general incorporation act of Congress in force in the District of Columbia. It owns a building in the City of Washington, situated on D Street, between Four-and-a-half and Sixth Streets, which was erected and has been used by it as a church for many years. The defendant in the court below, the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Company, is a corporation created under the laws of Maryland, and is authorized by act of Congress to lay its track within the limits of the city, and construct other works necessary and expedient to the proper completion and maintenance of its road.
The plaintiff alleges that the defendant, in 1874, erected an engine house and machine shop on a parcel of land immediately adjoining its church edifice, and has since used them in such a way as to disturb, on Sundays and other days, the congregation assembled in the church, to interfere with religious exercises therein, break up its Sunday schools, and destroy the value of the building as a place of public worship. It therefore brought the present suit in the Supreme Court of the District for the damages it had sustained. The defendant pleaded the general issue.
works upon the building line of its own premises within five and a half feet of the church edifice, and constructed upon the engine house sixteen smokestacks, lower in height than the windows of the main room of the church; that the nearest of the smokestacks was less than sixty feet from the windows, and the others were in a semicircular curve at gradually increasing distances; that during this period -- from April, 1874, to commencement of the present suit -- the plaintiff was accustomed to have on every Sabbath day Sunday school exercises in the morning, preaching in the forenoon, and preaching in the evening, and that religious services were also held in it on Wednesday evening of every week, and on the first Tuesday and Friday evenings of every month, and at intervals protracted religious meetings were held in it every night in the week except Saturday night; that during this period, these services were habitually interrupted and disturbed by the hammering noises made in the workshops of the company, the rumbling of its engines passing in and out of them, and the blowing off of steam; that these noises were at times so great as to prevent members of the congregation sitting in parts of the church furthest from the shops from hearing what was said; that the act of blowing off steam occupied from five to fifteen minutes, and frequently compelled the pastor of the church to suspend his remarks; that this was of habitual occurrence, during the day and at night, and on Sundays as well as other days, and that in the summertime, when the windows of the church were opened for air, smoke, cinders, and dust were blown from the smokestacks through the windows of the church, settling upon the pews and furniture and soiling the clothes of the occupants, accompanied by an offensive odor, which greatly annoyed the congregation.
that when the engines were brought into the house, the steam ordinarily was not blown off, but allowed to go down.
The main reliance, however, of the railroad company to defeat the action was the authority conferred upon it by the Act of Congress of February 5, 1867, to exercise the same powers, rights, and privileges in the construction of a road in the District of Columbia, the line of which was afterwards designated, which it could exercise under its charter in the construction of a road in Maryland, with some exceptions not material here. By its charter it was empowered to make and construct all works whatever which might "be necessary and expedient" in order to the proper completion and maintenance of the road.
The act of Congress provided that the road which the company was authorized to construct should enter the city at such a place and pass along such public street or alley to such terminus as might be allowed by Congress, upon the presentation of a survey and map of its proposed location. Subsequently Congress allowed the company to enter the city with its railroad by one of two routes, as it might select. It selected the one by which the road is brought along Virginia Avenue, in front of the church of the plaintiff, to the intersection of South C and West 9th Streets.
is created in making such repairs, and that said engine house is also used to receive coal for coaling the engines of defendant before going out, and that they are all coaled therein, and also get up their fire and steam therein, and further find that said house is located so near the church of the plaintiff that the noises from said engine house can be distinctly heard inside of the said church, and also that the chimneys of said engine house are so constructed that the tops thereof are not as high as the tops of the windows of said church, and shall further find that the smoke from said chimneys is thrown through said windows into said church in such quantities and so generally as to be a common annoyance and inconvenience to the congregation worshipping therein, and that said noises in said yard of blowing off steam are of daily and nightly occurrence, and are so distinctly heard in said church on Sundays, as well as the days of the week, as to annoy, harass, and inconvenience the congregation when engaged in divine worship therein, and that they disturb and greatly inconvenience the congregation in the enjoyment of said building as a church, then the plaintiff is entitled to recover, provided the jury find that said church was located upon the spot where it now is before the defendant established its engine house in its present position, and provided the jury further find that the annoyance and inconvenience to said congregation from the smoke and noises above mentioned occurred within three years before the date at which this suit was brought, and provided further that said noises and smoke depreciated the value of the property of the plaintiff within the period from April 1, 1874, to March 22, 1877."
must have it, if the shop is of that character and yet is a nuisance in the neighborhood, they must find some other place to put it. No legislature has a right to establish a private nuisance."
"The actual amount of pecuniary loss to the plaintiff is not necessarily the rule of damages in actions like the present. In estimating the amount of compensation to the plaintiff for the injury, if any, found to have been sustained by it, the jury may determine the extent of the injury and the equivalent damages in view of all the circumstances of said injury to said plaintiff, of depreciation in the value of its property during the period embraced in this suit, and of interference with the uses to which said property was devoted by said plaintiff during said period, and of all other particulars, if any, wherein the plaintiff is shown to have been injured during said period, and for which, under the instruction of the court, said plaintiff is entitled to recover."
value) because of the inconvenience and discomfort they have suffered from the use of the shop. The congregation has the same right to the comfortable enjoyment of its house for church purposes that a private gentleman has to the comfortable enjoyment of his own house, and it is the discomfort which is the primary consideration in allowing damages."
"If the jury find from the evidence that, among other purposes, the plaintiff's church was used by the said plaintiff as a school house for the instruction of children on the Sabbath day, and that a revenue was derived from such school, depending for the amount thereof upon the number of children attending said school, and shall also find that the defendant was in the habit of allowing its engines, with steam on, and ready to move out over D Street, to lie adjacent to the sidewalk of said D Street, adjacent to its workshop and engine house, and that in consequence of said engine's being so allowed to occupy such position, the number of pupils attending said school was diminished, and that from the said cause the number of the pupils of the said school was lessened within the period from March 22, 1874, to March 22, 1877, then the jury will consider the extent of such special damage to the plaintiff should they find such special damage an element in making up their verdict in this case."
threat of danger. It may fall upon him at any time, and a court of chancery would direct it to be removed, and on an indictment for a nuisance of that kind, it would be removed."
"But in private actions like this, it may be taken into consideration by the jury whether those engines, standing inside the house and passing out and in so frequently as they do and in that place, produce a reasonable and fair apprehension of danger to persons passing to that church, especially to children passing to Sunday school. You can take that element into your consideration."
of the congregation assembled in its church might suffer from the noise and offensive odors occasioned by the defendant's engines and shops.
The court refused to give these instructions, and the jury found for the plaintiff $4,500 damages, and the judgment entered thereon was affirmed at the general term of the Supreme Court of the district. To review that judgment, the defendant brought the case here on a writ of error.
prove, and from the verdict of the jury we must so infer, there can be no doubt of the right of the plaintiff to recover. The engine house and repair shop of the railroad company, as they were used, rendered it impossible for the plaintiff to occupy its building with any comfort as a place of public worship. The hammering in the shop, the rumbling of the engines passing in and out of the engine house, the blowing off of steam, the ringing of bells, the sounding of whistles, and the smoke from the chimneys, with its cinders, dust, and offensive odors, created a constant disturbance of the religious exercises of the church. The noise was often so great that the voice of the pastor while preaching could not be heard. The chimneys of the engine house being lower than the windows of the church, smoke and cinders sometimes entered the latter in such quantities as to cover the seats of the church with soot and soil the garments of the worshipers. Disagreeable odors, added to the noise, smoke, and cinders, rendered the place not only uncomfortable, but almost unendurable as a place of worship. As a consequence, the congregation decreased in numbers, and the Sunday school was less numerously attended than previously.
Plainly the engine house and repair shop, as they were used by the railroad company, were a nuisance in every sense of the term. They interfered with the enjoyment of property which was acquired by the plaintiff long before they were built, and was held as a place for religious exercises, for prayer and worship, and they disturbed and annoyed the congregation and Sunday school which assembled there on the Sabbath and on different evenings of the week. That is a nuisance which annoys and disturbs one in the possession of his property, rendering its ordinary use or occupation physically uncomfortable to him. For such annoyance and discomfort the courts of law will afford redress by giving damages against the wrongdoer, and when the cause of the annoyance and discomfort are continuous, courts of equity will interfere and restrain the nuisance. Crump v. Lambert, L.R. 3 Eq. 409.
them, are not affected by their corporate character. Private corporations are but associations of individuals united for some common purpose, and permitted by the law to use a common name and to change its members without a dissolution of the association. Whatever interferes with the comfortable use of their property for the purposes of their formation is as much the subject of complaint as though the members were united by some other than a corporate tie. Here the plaintiff, the Fifth Baptist Church, was incorporated that it might hold and use an edifice erected by it as a place of public worship for its members and those of similar faith meeting with them. Whatever prevents the comfortable use of the property for that purpose by the members of the corporation or those who by its permission unite with them in the church is a disturbance and annoyance -- as much so as if access by them to the church was impeded and rendered inconvenient and difficult. The purpose of the organization is thus thwarted. It is sufficient to maintain the action to show that the building of the plaintiff was thus rendered less valuable for the purposes to which it was devoted.
The liability of the defendant for the annoyance and discomfort caused is the same also as that of individuals for a similar wrong. The doctrine which formerly was sometimes asserted that an action will not lie against a corporation for a tort is exploded. The same rule in that respect now applies to corporations as to individuals. They are equally responsible for injuries done in the course of their business by their servants. This is so well settled as not to require the citation of any authorities in its support.
It is no answer to the action of the plaintiff that the railroad company was authorized by act of Congress to bring its track within the limits of the City of Washington and to construct such works as were necessary and expedient for the completion and maintenance of its road, and that the engine house and repair shop in question were thus necessary and expedient; that they are skillfully constructed; that the chimneys of the engine house are higher than required by the building regulations of the city, and that as little smoke and noise are caused as the nature of the business in them will permit.
In the first place, the authority of the company to construct such works as it might deem necessary and expedient for the completion and maintenance of its road did not authorize it to place them wherever it might think proper in the city without reference to the property and rights of others. As well might it be contended that the act permitted it to place them immediately in front of the President's house or of the capitol, or in the most densely populated locality. Indeed, the corporation does assert a right to place its works upon property it may acquire anywhere in the city. Whatever the extent of the authority conferred, it was accompanied with this implied qualification that the works should not be so placed as by their use to unreasonably interfere with and disturb the peaceful and comfortable enjoyment of others in their property. Grants of privileges or powers to corporate bodies like those in question confer no license to use them in disregard of the private rights of others and with immunity for their invasion. The great principle of the common law, which is equally the teaching of Christian morality, so to use one's property as not to injure others, forbids any other application or use of the rights and powers conferred.
premises within the city limits in a way which would subject others to physical discomfort and annoyance in the quiet use and enjoyment of their property, and at the same time exempt the company from the liability to suit for damages or compensation, to which individuals acting without such authority would be subject under like circumstances. Without expressing any opinion on this point, it is sufficient to observe that such authority would not justify an invasion of others' property to an extent which would amount to an entire deprivation of its use and enjoyment, without compensation to the owner. Nor could such authority be invoked to justify acts creating physical discomfort and annoyance to others in the use and enjoyment of their property, to a less extent than entire deprivation, if different places from those occupied could be used by the corporation for its purposes without causing such discomfort and annoyance.
The acts that a legislature may authorize which, without such authorization, would constitute nuisances are those which affect public highways or public streams, or matters in which the public have an interest and over which the public have control. The legislative authorization exempts only from liability to suits, civil or criminal at the instance of the state; it does not affect any claim of a private citizen for damages for any special inconvenience and discomfort not experienced by the public at large.
"for him [the grantee of the power] and his assignees to execute this act, so far as the public interests, the rights of navigation, fishing etc., are concerned, and he may plead, and successfully plead, the act to any indictment for a nuisance, or against any complaint for an infringement of the public right, but cannot plead it as a justification for a private injury which may result from the execution of the statute. "
In Crittenden v. Wilson, 5 Cowen 165, it was held by the Supreme Court of New York that an act authorizing one to build a dam on his own land upon a creek or river which was a public highway merely protected him from indictment for a nuisance. If, said the court, there had been no express provision in the act for the payment of damages, the defendant would still have been liable to pay them, and the effect of the grant was merely to authorize the defendant to erect a dam as he might have done if the stream had been his own, without a grant. In such a case, he would have been responsible in damages for all the injury occasioned by it to others.
"upon the language, and an unwarrantable imputation upon the wisdom and justice of the legislature, to hold that it imports an authority to cross the streams in such a manner as to be the cause of injury to others' adjoining property."
And so the court adjudged that the company was under the same obligation as a private owner of the land and stream, had he bridged it, and that the right granted to bridge the stream gave no immunity for damages which the excavation of its banks for that purpose might cause to others.
In Commonwealth v. Kidder, in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 107 Mass. 188, a statute of that state authorized the storage, keeping, manufacture, and refining of crude petroleum or any of its products in detached and properly ventilated buildings specially adapted to that purpose, and it was held that it did not justify the refining of petroleum at any place where a necessary consequence of the manufacture was the emission of vapors which constitute a nuisance at common law by their unwholesome and offensive nature.
Numerous other decisions from the courts of the several states might be cited in support of the position that the grant of powers and privileges to do certain things does not carry with it any immunity for private injuries which may result directly from the exercise of those powers and privileges.
If, as asserted by the defendant, the noise, smoke, and odors, which are the cause of the discomfort and annoyance to the plaintiff, are no more than must necessarily arise from the nature of the business carried on with an engine house and workshop as ordinarily constructed, then the engine house and workshop should be so remodeled and changed in their structure as to prevent, if that be possible, the nuisance complained of, and if that be not possible, they should be removed to some other place where, by their use, the plaintiff would not be thus annoyed and disturbed in the enjoyment of its property. There are many places in the city sufficiently distant from the church to avoid all cause of complaint, and yet sufficiently near the station of the company to answer its purposes.
There are many lawful and necessary occupations which, by the odors they engender or the noise they create, are nuisances when carried on in the heart of a city, such as the slaughtering of cattle, the training of tallow, the burning of lime, and the like. Their presence near one's dwelling house would often render it unfit for habitation. It is a wise police regulation, essential to the health and comfort of the inhabitants of a city, that they should be carried on outside of its limits. Slaughterhouses, lime kilns, and tallow furnaces are therefore generally removed from the occupied parts of a city or located beyond its limits. No permission given to conduct such an occupation within the limits of a city would exempt the parties from liability for damages occasioned to others, however carefully they might conduct their business. Fish v. Dodge, 4 Denio 311.
being made higher, nor could they release from liability if not made high enough. It is an actionable nuisance to build one's chimneys so low as to cause the smoke to enter his neighbor's house. If any adjudication is wanted for a rule so obvious, it will be found in the cases of Sampson v. Smith, 8 Sim. 272, and Whitney v. Bartholomew, 21 Conn. 212.
The instruction of the court as to the estimate of damages was correct. Mere depreciation of the property was not the only element for consideration. That might indeed be entirely disregarded. The plaintiff was entitled to recover because of the inconvenience and discomfort caused to the congregation assembled, thus necessarily tending to destroy the use of the building for the purposes for which it was erected and dedicated. The property might not be depreciated in its salable or market value if the building had been entirely closed for those purposes by the noise, smoke, and odors of the defendant's shops. It might then, perhaps, have brought in the market as great a price to be used for some other purpose. But, as the court below very properly said to the jury, the congregation had the same right to the comfortable enjoyment of its house for church purposes that a private gentleman has to the comfortable enjoyment of his own house, and it is the discomfort and annoyance in its use for those purposes which is the primary consideration in allowing damages. As with a blow on the face, there may be no arithmetical rule for the estimate of damages. There is, however, an injury the extent of which the jury may measure.

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