Opinion ID: 1408111
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Relation Between Crimes and Public Nuisances

Text: As Justice Brewer noted in the Debs case: A chancellor has no criminal jurisdiction. Something more than the threatened commission of an offense against the laws of the land is necessary to call into exercise the injunctive powers of the court. There must be some interference, actual or threatened, with property or rights ... but when such interferences appear the jurisdiction of a court of equity arises, and is not destroyed by the fact that they are accompanied by or are themselves violations of the criminal law.... ( In re Debs, supra, 158 U.S. at p. 593 [15 S.Ct. at pp. 909-910].) (3) We made the same point in People v. Lim, supra, 18 Cal.2d 872, 879, quoting a West Virginia case: We think the proper rule, therefore, and the one to which this state is committed is expressed in the following language from State v. Ehrlick [, supra, 64 S.E. 935, 939]: `It is also competent for the Legislature ... to declare any act criminal and make the repetition or continuance thereof a public nuisance ... or to vest in courts of equity the power to abate them by injunction....' In the Ehrlick case itself, the West Virginia high court wrote that the Attorney General may proceed in equity on behalf of the public to abate the nuisance, if it be one. Whether it be a criminal nuisance or not is wholly immaterial. If it is indictable as a crime, it does not bar the remedy in equity, because the citizen and the general public have an immediate right to the enjoyment of the thing interfered with. A criminal prosecution is inadequate in such case, because it does not prevent the doing of the unlawful act. It may ultimately correct the wrong, but, while the process of correction is going on, the public is deprived of an important and valuable right, wherefore the injury is irreparable. In such cases it is not the criminality of the act that gives jurisdiction in equity, but the deprivation of personal and property rights interfered with, injured, destroyed, or taken away by the unlawful act. ( State v. Ehrlick, supra, 64 S.E. 935, 939; see also People v. Seccombe, supra, 103 Cal. App. 306, 314 [relying on State v. Ehrlick, supra, 64 S.E. 935, 939]; Weis v. Superior Court (1916) 30 Cal. App. 730, 732 [159 P. 464]; People v. Steele (1935) 4 Cal. App.2d 206, 208 [40 P.2d 959]; Commonwealth v. McGovern (1903) 116 Ky. 212 [75 S.W. 261, 264]; Nathan H. Schur, Inc. v. City of Santa Monica (1956) 47 Cal.2d 11 [300 P.2d 831] ( semble ); Armory Park v. Episcopal Community Services (1985) 148 Ariz. 1 [712 P.2d 914, 923] [We hold, therefore, that conduct which unreasonably ... interferes with the public health, safety, peace, comfort or convenience is a public nuisance ... even if that conduct is not specifically prohibited by the criminal law.]; cf. Rest.2d Torts, § 821B, com. d, p. 89 [This [statement, i.e., that `in order to be treated as a public nuisance, conduct must have been already proscribed by the state as criminal'] is too restrictive.... [T]here is clear recognition that a defendant need not be subject to criminal responsibility.].) The Court of Appeal was thus partly accurate in reasoning that a public nuisance is always a criminal offense, for indeed it is. (See Pen. Code, § 372 [maintenance of a public nuisance is a misdemeanor].) It is the corollary to that proposition  that the superior court's injunction was valid only to the extent that it enjoined conduct that is independently proscribed by the Penal Code  that is flawed. (4) Acts or conduct which qualify as public nuisances are enjoinable as civil wrongs or prosecutable as criminal misdemeanors, a characteristic that derives not from their status as independent crimes, but from their inherent tendency to injure or interfere with the community's exercise and enjoyment of rights common to the public. It is precisely this recognition of  and willingness to vindicate  the value of community and the collective interests it furthers, rather than to punish criminal acts, that lies at the heart of the public nuisance as an equitable doctrine. We will return to this notion of the community and its collective values as the touchstone of the public nuisance doctrine later, when we assess the sufficiency of the superior court's interlocutory decree in light of the requirements laid down in People v. Lim, supra, 18 Cal.2d 872. Before doing so, however, we first consider defendants' challenges to the constitutionality of the preliminary injunction, challenges that the Court of Appeal found persuasive.