Opinion ID: 1721531
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Heading: Applicable law. Under Iowa Code section 657.1,

Text: [w]hatever is injurious to health, indecent, or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as essentially to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, is a nuisance, and a civil action by ordinary proceedings may be brought to enjoin and abate the same and to recover damages sustained on account thereof. (Emphasis added.) Additionally, under Iowa Code section 657.2, [t]he following are nuisances: ... using any building or other place for the exercise of any trade, ... which, by occasioning noxious exhalations, offensive smells, or other annoyances, becomes injurious and dangerous to the health, comfort, or property of individuals.... These statutory provisions do not modify the common-law's application to nuisances. Bates v. Quality Ready-Mix Co., 261 Iowa 696, 703, 154 N.W.2d 852, 857 (1967). These provisions are skeletal in form, and the courts look to the common law to fill in the gaps. A private nuisance is an actionable interference with a person's interest in the private use and enjoyment of the person's land. Id. Parties must use their own property in such a manner that they will not unreasonably interfere with or disturb their neighbor's reasonable use and enjoyment of the neighbor's property. Id. Whether a lawful business is a nuisance depends on the reasonableness of conducting the business in the manner, at the place, and under the circumstances in question. Id. Thus the existence of a nuisance does not depend on the intention of the party who created it. Patz v. Farmegg Prods., Inc., 196 N.W.2d 557, 561 (Iowa 1972). Rather, it depends on the following three factors: priority of location, the nature of the neighborhood, and the wrong complained of. Id. From this discussion it is clear that whether a party has created and maintained a nuisance is ordinarily a factual question. Bates, 261 Iowa at 704, 154 N.W.2d at 857. A fact finder uses the normal person standard to determine whether a nuisance involving personal discomfort or annoyance is significant enough to constitute a nuisance. Patz, 196 N.W.2d at 561. The normal-person standard is an objective standard and is explained in comment d to section 821F of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1977): When [an invasion] involves ... personal discomfort or annoyance, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the invasion is significant [enough to constitute a nuisance]. The standard for the determination of significant character is the standard of normal persons or property in the particular locality. If normal persons living in the community would regard the invasion in question as definitely offensive, seriously annoying or intolerable, then the invasion is significant. If normal persons in that locality would not be substantially annoyed or disturbed by the situation, then the invasion is not a significant one, even though the idiosyncracies of the particular plaintiff may make it unendurable to him. 2. The merits. The Weinholds kept track of the times and characteristics of the odors from the Wolffs' facility by making entries on their wall calendar. The entries run from January 31, 1991, through December 1993. The Weinholds estimate they recorded all but about ten percent of the times either one detected odor from the facility. The first entryJanuary 31, 1991 notes, Wind out of the S. hog smell all day. The entries that follow describe the odor as terrible, a stink, and strong. Some of the summer entries describes the smell as a terrible stink. Other entries describe how the smell remains in the home all day. There are entries that describe the pair suffering stomach sickness, sneezing, headaches, sore throats, coughing, and tightness in the chest. The calendar entries in July 1991 mention visitors to the home who experienced burning eyes and phlegmonous irritation. August entries reflect the Weinholds had trouble sleeping because of the odor. Toward the end of August the odor drove the couple from their home. They slept in their camper at their son's home to escape the odor. Their complaints continued through the trial date. The odor problem is most persistent between March and October. During this time, the waste in the earthen storage basin is thawed and the prevailing wind is most often from the south. On a humid day, the south wind makes life at the Weinholds' home intolerable. The wind, of course, shifts. So, not surprisingly, the Weinholds encounter the smell at various locations in a given day. Sometimes the smell invades their home and sometimes the smell is at other locations on their property. During the winter, crusting on the surface of the basinwhich cuts down the amount of odor escapinghas not been as effective as planned. The hog waste mixture freezes at a temperature lower than thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. As mentioned, each month the Weinholds dump into the basin from 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of waste. When dumped during the winter, this waste has a temperature of sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The waste's temperature combined with warmer air temperatures causes the crust to form over only a small part of the basin's surface. This leaves the waste exposed and permits the waste odor to rise and be swept away by the prevailing wind. The Weinholds and other witnesses said they can distinguish between an odor that comes from a more traditional hog operation with no outside waste storage and an odor that comes from a hog confinement operation with outdoor waste storage. They described the odor from the traditional operation as a hog odor or normal hog smell. In contrast, they described the odor from the second type of operation as pungent, smells exactly like an open septic tank, very, very nauseating, a lot stronger than what I normally smell, smells like a battery overchargedkind of an acid smell, a strong, repugnant odor. Some of the witnesses were at the Weinholds' home for business reasons and described terminating their visits abruptly because of the strong odor. One witness who farms next to the Wolffs' eighty acres described the smell as a lagoon odor when the wind is in her direction. At times the odor was so strong that she and her husband would quit working and leave the fields. She described the odor as different from what she would ordinarily encounter near a traditional hog operation. Many of the Weinholds' witnesses were born and raised on farms. Some were hog farmers. Others continue to be hog farmers. There was no evidence that any of them were other than persons of ordinary sensibilities. As Bates holds, whether a business is a nuisance depends on three factors: priority of location, the nature of the neighborhood, and the wrong complained of. Bates, 261 Iowa at 704, 154 N.W.2d at 857. In Kriener v. Turkey Valley Community School District, 212 N.W.2d 526, 530 (Iowa 1973), the landowners acquired their farm and located on it before an offending sewage lagoon was constructed. We found this fact weighed heavily in favor of the landowner on the nuisance issue. Here the Weinholds acquired their farm before the Wolffs started their hog feeding and confinement operation. The Weinholds therefore clearly enjoyed priority of possession. The nature of the locality before the Wolffs started this operation was typical for rural Iowa. Although the locality was agricultural, it was also residential. As one court said, [t]he right to have air floating over one's premises free from noxious and unnatural impurities is a right as absolute as the right to the soil itself. Ordinarily, a legitimate business enterprise is not a nuisance per se, but may become a nuisance in fact by reason of the conditions implicit in and unavoidably resulting from its operation or because of the manner of its operation. The fact that a residence is in a rural area requires an expectation that the residence will be subjected to normal rural conditions, but not to such excessive abuse as to destroy the ability to live and enjoy the home, or such as to reduce the value of the residential property. Flansburgh v. Coffey, 220 Neb. 381, 370 N.W.2d 127, 131 (1985) (dealing with whether hog confinement operation was a nuisance). As to the wrong complained of, we agree with and adopt the following findings by the district court: The court finds from the greater weight of the evidence that the Weinholds experience odors upon their property which are carried to it from the Wolffs' hog confinement facility and earthen basin approximately 100 times per year, commencing from January of 1991 to and including the last day of trial; that at least 50% of those times the odor would be strong enough in intensity to offend the senses of a person of ordinary or normal sensibility; that at least 25% of those occasions, or on about 25 days each year, the odor encountered by the Weinholds ... from the Wolffs earthen storage basin ... would have, at the Weinholds' location, been of such strength to be close to intolerable to a person of ordinary or normal sensibility; that especially the latter-described odor substantially interfered, on each occasion, with the Weinholds' right to utilize and enjoy their own property free of the unreasonable interference of odors emanating from the Wolffs' hog confinement facility and earthen waste storage basin. Although the Wolffs were carrying on a lawful business in accordance with accepted standards, their operation constituted a nuisance. As we have held, [a] lawful business, properly conducted, may still constitute a nuisance if [the business] interferes with another's use of his own property. Valasek v. Baer, 401 N.W.2d 33, 35 (Iowa 1987).