Opinion ID: 852959
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Public Nuisance as an Unreasonable Interference with a Public Right

Text: The essence of the City's claim is that handgun manufacturers, distributors, and dealers conduct their business in a manner that unreasonably interferes with public rights in the City of Gary, and therefore have created a public nuisance. In addressing this contention all parties to the lawsuit look to the Restatement (Second) of Torts section 821B, which defines a public nuisance as an unreasonable interference with a right common to the general public. Indiana nuisance law is grounded in a statute enacted in 1881, and now appearing at Indiana Code section 32-30-6-6. [5] It reads: Whatever is: (1) injurious to health; (2) indecent; (3) offensive to the senses; or (4) 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 the subject of an action. The Indiana statute, unlike the Restatement and most common law formulations of public nuisance, makes no explicit mention of the reasonableness of the conduct that is alleged to constitute a nuisance. However, the language of the statute is very broad, and if read literally would create a cause of action for many activities not actionable as nuisances at common law and not generally viewed as improper even though they produce, at least to some extent, one or more of the effects listed in the statute. In recognition of this practical reality, over the intervening 122 years, Indiana courts have consistently referred to the common law reasonableness standard in applying the Indiana nuisance statute. Indeed, in 1881, the year of the statute's enactment, this Court referred to the need to avoid unnecessary inconvenience or annoyance to others. Owen v. Phillips, 73 Ind. 284 (1881), was a private nuisance case by adjoining property owners seeking to have a mill declared a nuisance. This Court pointed out the need to balance the usefulness of the activity against the harm to others in evaluating a claim of nuisance: We approve, in its fullest extent, the doctrine, that in some localities a business will be considered a nuisance, while it would not be so in others. But wherever the mill or factory may be located, whatever its surroundings, property owners of the vicinity have a right to require that it shall be properly managed, conducted with ordinary care and proper regard for the rights of others, and in such a way as that no unnecessary inconvenience or annoyance shall be caused them. Id. at 295-96. More recently, in addressing a nuisance claim based on an alleged hazardous use of real property, this Court adopted a more modern formulation of essentially the same concept. A public nuisance was described as an activity reasonably and naturally calculated to injure the general public: Not every dangerous agency is a nuisance, and we believe it can be said generally that an instrumentality maintained upon private premises may only be said to be a nuisance upon the ground that it is calculated to produce personal injuries when it is of such character, and so maintained, that it is reasonably and naturally calculated to injure the general public or strangers who may come upon the premises. Town of Kirklin v. Everman, 217 Ind. 683, 688, 28 N.E.2d 73, 75 (1940). In addition, several Indiana Court of Appeals decisions, including that of the Court of Appeals in this case, have adopted the Restatement's formulation of a nuisance as an unreasonable interference with common or public rights. [6] Despite the statute's absolutist approach, all parties to this lawsuit have couched their arguments in terms of the reasonableness of the defendant's conduct. Given this consistent interpretation of a statute long on the books, we reaffirm that a nuisance claim is, as the Restatement says, predicated on unreasonable interference with a public right. Reasonableness in evaluating a nuisance claim appears to have been used by Indiana courts in two related but facially different senses. Defining a nuisance as conduct reasonably calculated to injure seems to focus on the predictability of resulting injury. Reasonable conduct, on the other hand, focuses on the activity claimed to constitute a nuisance. The formulation of the Restatement seems consistent with the first view, by looking to the resulting injury to the public as the test of unreasonable interference. Comment (e) to the Restatement section 821B defines an unreasonable interference: the defendant is held liable for a public nuisance if his interference with the public right was intentional or was unintentional and otherwise actionable under the principles controlling liability for negligent or reckless conduct or for abnormally dangerous activities.... If the interference with the public right is intentional, it must also be unreasonable. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 821B cmt. e. We think this boils down to the same question for the trier of fact framed by Owen over a century ago: a nuisance is an activity that generates injury or inconvenience to others that is both sufficiently grave and sufficiently foreseeable that it renders it unreasonable to proceed at least without compensation to those that are harmed. Whether it is unreasonable turns on whether the activity, even if lawful, can be expected to impose such costs or inconvenience on others that those costs should be borne by the generator of the activity, or the activity must be stopped or modified. W. Page Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on The Law of Torts § 88 at 629-30 (5th ed.1984). And of course the same activity may constitute a nuisance in some contexts, but be acceptable in others where its adverse effects are not sufficient to require a remedy.