Opinion ID: 1470023
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: History of Public Nuisance

Text: The definition of public nuisance and the description of the elements comprising this cause of action have been developed and refined by this Court over the years. Mindful of the admonition of United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that [i]n order to know what [the law] is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become as that is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is, we begin our analysis by retracing the history of public nuisance at common law. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 1, 37 (Dover ed., General Publishing Co., Ltd., 1991) (1881). Today, public nuisance and private nuisance are separate and distinct causes of action, but both torts are inextricably linked by their joint origin as a common writ, dating to twelfth-century English common law. See Richard O. Faulk and John S. Gray, Alchemy in the Courtroom? The Transmutation of Public Nuisance Litigation, 2007 Mich. St. L. Rev. 941, 951 (2007) (citing C.H.S. Fifoot, History and Sources of the Common Law: Tort and Contract 3-5 (1949)); Donald G. Gifford, Public Nuisance as a Mass Products Liability Tort, 71 U. Cin. L. Rev. 741, 790-91, 794 (2003)). In its earliest form, nuisance was a criminal writ used to prosecute individuals or require abatement of activities considered to be `nocumentum iniuriousum propter communem et publicam utiliatem'  a nuisance by reason of the common and public welfare. Gifford, 71 U. Cin. L. Rev. at 793-94 (citing Henry de Bracton, 3 Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England 191, f. 232b (Samuel E. Thorne ed., 1977)). Public nuisance, or common nuisance as it originally was called, was an infringement of the rights of the Crown. 4 Restatement (Second) Torts § 821B, cmt. a at 87 (1979). Although the earliest cases involved encroachments on the royal domain, public nuisance law evolved to include the invasion of the rights of the public. Id. By the fourteenth century, courts began to apply public nuisance principles to protect rights common to the public, including roadway safety, air and water pollution, disorderly conduct, and public health   . Faulk & Gray, 2007 Mich. St. L. Rev. at 951. Nuisance became a flexible judicial remedy that allowed courts to address conflicts between land use and social welfare at a time when government regulations had not yet made their debut. Id. It was not until the sixteenth century that the crime of public nuisance largely was transformed into the tort that is familiar in our courts today. Faulk & Gray, 2007 Mich. St. L. Rev. at 952. However, additional parameters were necessary to limit the reach of the new tort. A private party seeking to bring a public nuisance claim was required to demonstrate that he or she had suffered a `particular' or `special' injury that was not common to the public. Id.; see also 4 Restatement (Second) Torts § 821B, cmt. a at 87-88 (explaining that public nuisance had remained a crime until the sixteenth century, when it first was determined that a private individual, suffering a particularized harm different in kind from that suffered by the public, had the right, in tort, to recover damages for his injury). Ultimately, [a]t common law public nuisance came to cover a large, miscellaneous and diversified group of minor offenses   . 4 Restatement (Second) Torts § 821B, cmt. b at 40. Notably, all these offenses involved an interference with the interests of the community at largeinterests that were recognized as rights of the general public entitled to protection. Id. Public nuisance as it existed in English common law made its way to Colonial America without change. Faulk & Gray, 2007 Mich. St. L. Rev. at 953. In time, public nuisance became better known as a tort, and its criminal counterpart began to fade away in American jurisprudence. As state legislatures started enacting statutes prohibiting particular conduct and setting forth criminal penalties there was little need for the broad, vague, and anachronistic crime of nuisance. 4 Restatement (Second) Torts § 821B, cmt. c at 88. The criminal origins of public nuisance in Rhode Island still can be found in statutes designating certain criminal activities and the places in which they are conducted as common nuisances. See, e.g., G.L. 1956 § 11-30-2 (defining the unlicensed manufacture or distribution of intoxicating liquor as a common nuisance); § 11-30-12 (defining slaughterhouses, rendering plants, garbage plants, and brick kilns as common nuisances if located within 300 feet of any public park or public hospital); § 11-30-13 (defining the burning of decaying and waste substances as a nuisance); G.L. 1956 § 21-28-4.06 (defining certain facilities used in the distribution of illegal drugs as common nuisances); G.L. 1956 § 41-5-20 (defining unauthorized boxing matches as common nuisances).