Opinion ID: 1408111
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Origin and Nature of Actions to Enjoin Public Nuisances

Text: Often the public interest in tranquillity, security, and protection is invoked only to be blithely dismissed, subordinated to the paramount right of the individual. In this case, however, the true nature of the trade-off becomes painfully obvious. Liberty unrestrained is an invitation to anarchy. Freedom and responsibility are joined at the hip. Wise accommodation between liberty and order always has been, and ever will be, indispensable for a democratic society. ( Kovacs v. Cooper (1948) 336 U.S. 77, 89 [69 S.Ct. 448, 454, 93 L.Ed. 513, 10 A.L.R.2d 608] (conc. opn. of Frankfurter, J.).) There must be an irreducible minimum of reciprocity for civil society to function. [T]he very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests. ( Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 406 U.S. 205, 215-216 [92 S.Ct. 1526, 1533, 32 L.Ed.2d 15].) The state has not only a right to maintain a decent society ( Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) 378 U.S. 184, 199 [84 S.Ct. 1676, 1684, 12 L.Ed.2d 793]), but an obligation to do so. In the public nuisance context, the community's right to security and protection must be reconciled with the individual's right to expressive and associative freedom. Reconciliation begins with the acknowledgment that the interests of the community are not invariably less important than the freedom of individuals. Indeed, the security and protection of the community is the bedrock on which the superstructure of individual liberty rests. From Montesquieu to Locke to Madison, the description of the pivotal compact remains unchanged: By entering society, individuals give up the unrestrained right to act as they think fit; in return, each has a positive right to society's protection. Montesquieu describes this civil liberty as that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen. (Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (U. Cambridge Press 1989) ch. 6, p. 157; and see Locke, Two Treatises on Government (U. Cambridge Press, student ed. 1988) §§ 122, 140, 211, 227; Madison, The Federalist No. 51 (Rossiter ed. 1961) pp. 324, 325.) As we explain, a principal office of the centuries-old doctrine of the public nuisance has been the maintenance of public order  tranquillity, security and protection  when the criminal law proves inadequate. There are few forms of action in the history of Anglo-American law with a pedigree older than suits seeking to restrain nuisances, whether public or private. Actions to abate private nuisances by injunction are the oldest of these apparent twins, which have almost nothing in common except the word nuisance itself. Unlike the private nuisance  tied to and designed to vindicate individual ownership interests in land  the common or public nuisance emerged from distinctly different historical origins. The public nuisance doctrine is aimed at the protection and redress of community interests and, at least in theory, embodies a kind of collective ideal of civil life which the courts have vindicated by equitable remedies since the beginning of the 16th century. Originally, a public nuisance was an offense against the crown, prosecuted as a crime. The first known statute dealing with public nuisances  enacted in the 12th year of Richard II's reign  had as its subject the pollution of waters and ditches lying near settlements, and provided criminal liability for the offender. [2] The earliest public nuisance statute thus bore a feature that marks the entire field even today: public nuisances are offenses against, or interferences with, the exercise of rights common to the public. (See generally, Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (3d ed. 1990) pp. 492-494.) In this country, as in England, civil suits in equity to enjoin public nuisances at the instance of public law officers  typically a state's Attorney General  grew increasingly common during the course of the 19th century, a trend that was not without critics. (See, e.g., 2 Story, Equity Jurisprudence (14th ed. 1918) § 1250, p. 597 [In cases of public nuisances properly so called an indictment lies to abate them and to punish the offenders. But an information also lies in equity to redress the grievance by way of injunction. (Fn. omitted.)]; Mugler v. Kansas (1887) 123 U.S. 623, 672-673 [8 S.Ct. 273, 302-303, 31 L.Ed. 205]; cf. State v. Ehrlick (1909) 65 W. Va. 700 [64 S.E. 935, 938] [`If a charge be of a criminal nature, or an offense against the public, and does not touch the enjoyment of property, it ought not to be brought within the direct jurisdiction of this court, which was intended to deal only in matters of civil right resting in equity....' Attorney General v. Insurance Co., 2 Johns. Ch. 378....].) With the publication of the Restatement Second of Torts in 1965, the law of public nuisances had crystallized to such an extent that its features could be clearly delineated. Section 821B of Restatement Second of Torts identifies five general categories of public rights, the unreasonable interference with which may constitute a public nuisance: the public health, the public safety, the public peace, the public comfort or the public convenience. (Rest.2d Torts, § 821B, subd. (2)(a).) A public right, according to the Restatement Second, is one common to all members of the general public. It is collective in nature and not like the individual right that everyone has not to be assaulted or defamed or defrauded or negligently injured. ( Id., com. g, p. 92.) In California, the early common law categories of public nuisance, codified in 1872 and still applicable, define anything that is injurious to health, ... or is indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, or unlawfully obstructs the free passage or use, in the customary manner, of any navigable lake, or river, bay, stream, canal, or basin, or any public park, square, street, or highway, as a nuisance. (Civ. Code, § 3479.) Civil Code sections 3480 and 3481 divide the class of nuisances into public and private. A public nuisance is one which affects at the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons. (Civ. Code, § 3480.) Rounding out the taxonomy of the Civil Code, section 3491 provides that [t]he remedies against a public nuisance are: [¶] 1. Indictment or information; [¶] 2. A civil action; or, [¶] 3. Abatement. Section 370 of the Penal Code mirrors these civil provisions, combining the characteristics of nuisances generally with a distinctly public quality: that a given activity interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by an entire community or neighborhood, or by any considerable number of persons. (Pen. Code, § 370, italics added.) In People ex rel. Busch v. Projection Room Theater (1976) 17 Cal.3d 42, 49 [130 Cal. Rptr. 328, 550 P.2d 600], we parsed these code provisions, remarking on the substantial identity of definitions appearing in Penal Code sections 370 and 371, and Civil Code sections 3479 and 3480.... After quoting the text of section 370, we observed: [T]he proscribed act may be anything which alternatively is injurious to health or is indecent, or offensive to the senses; the result [] of the act must interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property; and those affected by the act may be an entire neighborhood or a considerable number of persons, and as amplified by Penal Code section 371 the extent of the annoyance or damage on the affected individuals may be unequal. ( People ex rel. Busch v. Projection Room Theater, supra, 17 Cal.3d at p. 49, original italics deleted, new italics added.) (1) It is this community aspect of the public nuisance, reflected in the civil and criminal counterparts of the California code, that distinguishes it from its private cousin, and makes possible its use, by means of the equitable injunction, to protect the quality of organized social life. Of course, not every interference with collective social interests constitutes a public nuisance. To qualify, and thus be enjoinable, the interference must be both substantial and unreasonable. We recently discussed these two requirements, albeit in the context of private nuisances, in San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. Superior Court (1996) 13 Cal.4th 893 [55 Cal. Rptr.2d 724, 920 P.2d 669]. [3] Relying on the Restatement Second of Torts, we observed that `Life in organized society and especially in populous communities involves an unavoidable clash of individual interests. Practically all human activities unless carried on in a wilderness interfere to some extent with others or involve some risk of interference, and these interferences range from mere trifling annoyances to serious harms. It is an obvious truth that each individual in a community must put up with a certain amount of annoyance, inconvenience and interference and must take a certain amount of risk in order that all may get on together.' (13 Cal.4th at p. 937, quoting Rest.2d Torts, § 822, com. g, p. 112.) The Restatement Second formulates the requirement of substantiality as proof of significant harm, defined as a real and appreciable invasion of the plaintiff's interests, one that is definitely offensive, seriously annoying or intolerable. (Rest.2d Torts, § 821F, coms. c & d, pp. 105-106.) The measure is an objective one: If normal persons in that locality would not be substantially annoyed or disturbed by the situation, then the invasion is not a significant one.... ( Id., com. d, p. 106.) The unreasonableness of a given interference represents a judgment reached by comparing the social utility of an activity against the gravity of the harm it inflicts, taking into account a handful of relevant factors. (See Rest.2d Torts, §§ 826-831; San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. Superior Court, supra, 13 Cal.4th at p. 938.) Here again, the standard is an objective one: [T]he question is not whether the particular plaintiff found the invasion unreasonable, but `whether reasonable persons generally, looking at the whole situation impartially and objectively, would consider it unreasonable.' ( San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. Superior Court, supra, 13 Cal.4th at p. 938, quoting Rest.2d Torts, § 826, com. c, p. 121.)