Court Opinion

ID: 9653168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:40:06.568228+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:56.724298
License: Public Domain

HICKENLOOPER, Circuit Judge
(concurrjng.)
I concur conolusion reaclled in the majority opinion, but cannot concur in that portion which seems to me to create a distinction between flights in the upper and lower strata, founded upon reasonable expectation *205of use, and to hold that, although a single flight over the plaintiff’s land may not constitute a trespass, such flights may he so continuous as in the aggregate to do so. This precise question was not directly involved in Portsmouth Co. v. United States, 260 U. S. 327, 43 S. Ct. 135, 67 L. Ed. 287, which went no further than to hold that use of the lower stratum of overlying air might he so continuous and permanent as to amount to a disseizin in whole or in part by the imposition of a servitude, for which taking the United States government must compensate. It seems to me obvious that, if the aggregate of a large number of flights constitutes a trespass, it must he because each of said flights is itself a trespass, and that a trespass, in its technical sense, cannot be made up of a series of acts no one of which, standing alone, amounts to such trespass. So also, if a court of equity has jurisdiction of this phase of the case, it must be upon the ground of repeated trespasses for which no adequate remedy existed at law, and not upon the ground of a single disseizin or imposition of a servitude.
This highly technical question seems to mo unnecessary of decision in the present ease, for whether the court takes jurisdiction to enjoin the continuance of a nuisance or to restrain repeated trespasses, or both, it is quite clear that the acts of the defendant constitute a nuisance and should he enjoined upon that ground. This is the basis of my concurrence.