Opinion ID: 2165775
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Governmental public nuisance claims

Text: The city contends, and the dissent would hold, that this public nuisance claim does not fit within the causation standards for other torts because the damage is not an individual injury, but a widespread health hazard that is uniquely publicthe monumental task of cleaning up [d]efendants' toxic products falls upon the City and its taxpayers. The trial court noted the attractiveness of the argument, but concluded that to adopt it would require a departure from or require a modification of Zafft and the standards for proving actual causation. This Court declines to approve such a departure in this case. Although the city characterizes its suit as one for an injury to the public health and suggests that it is for this injury that it is suing, this is not the case. The damages it seeks are in the nature of a private tort action for the costs the city allegedly incurred abating and remediating lead paint in certain, albeit numerous, properties. In this way, the city's claims are like those of any plaintiff seeking particularized damages allegedly resulting from a public nuisance. The city, therefore, must meet the same causation standard as must other nuisance claimants and must show specific and particularized harm from the public nuisance of lead paint, different in kind from the harm to the rest of the community. A public nuisance is any unreasonable interference with the rights common to all members of the community in general and encompasses the public health, safety, peace, morals or convenience. . . . The public nuisance also becomes a private tort when an individual shows a particular damage of a kind not shared with the rest of the public. . . . the private tort accrues to recompense damage particular to the person and not shared with the general public. State ex inf. Ashcroft v. Kansas City Firefighters Local No. 42, 672 S.W.2d 99, 114-15, (Mo.App. 1984) (suit by state, in the stead of municipality, to recompense for public injury caused by striking public employees did not seek damages distinctive from those suffered by general community and, thus, was not a private tort). The city's argument, accepted by the dissent, that its status as a governmental entity or the public nature of the injury should set this apart from other public nuisances or subject it to lesser causation standards does not apply to the damage suit it has actually brought.