Court Opinion

ID: 9679226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:44:52.373208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:11.523301
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(concurring).
I concur in the result which affords the defendant an opportunity to take corrective measures to abate the severe inconveniences caused the plaintiffs, his neighbors, because of his operation of a stable. However, I am of the opinion that the result should have been reached soley by the application of the civil law, more particularly Civil Code Article 669, without resort to common law authority or terminology. In Reymond v. State Through Department of Highways, 255 La. 425, 231 So.2d 375, at footnote 6, it was stated in dictum that Article 669 was the vehicle for defining the limits of the activities of man in use of property as they affect his neighbors.1 That article provides: “If the works or materials for any manufactory or other operation, cause an inconvenience to those in the same or in the neighboring houses, by diffusing smoke or nauseous smell, and there be no servitude established by which they are regulated, their sufferance must be determined by the rules of the police, or the customs of the place.”
It was further stated in Reymond that although this article appears under a title and chapter dealing with servitudes, it does not in fact establish a servitude. That opinion pointed out, as has the majority here, that as originally adopted in our law (Article 17, p. 130, of our Code of 1808), it followed Domat by including, in addition to “smoke” and “nauseous smell”, “the other different inconveniences which one neighbor may cause to another”. Oeuvres completes de J. Domat, Book 1, Title 12, Section 2, No. 10 (éd. Remy 1835). Article 665 of our 1825 Civil Code and Article 669 of our present Code omit “the other different inconveniences”. The majority here *157has concluded because of this omission that the article must be confined to “smoke” and “nauseous smell”, and that we cannot treat these as being merely illustrative of the inconveniences which man need not suffer. After finding the Code article to be so limiting of application, the majority proceeds to resort to the common law to circumvent this very restrictive meaning which it has accorded the codal article.
I reiterate that Article 669 does not establish a servitude, for it does not provide for a dominant and a servient estate, and in fact, contrary to the servitude law, even provides redress for those in the same house and upon the same estate against their neighbors. 1 Pt. 2 Planiol, Treatise on the Civil Law (La. State Law Institute tr. 1959) No. 2906. However, I find the article vital and most functional in expressing the activities of men upon property they own, hold, occupy, or use which become impermissible by causing insupportable inconvenience to neighbors.
The majority’s error in holding Article 669 of the Code of 1870 not to be illustrative because of the omission of the pertinent phrase from it and from corresponding Article 665 of the Code of 1825 results from failure to examine the French text of Article 665 of the 1825 Code. While the “other different inconveniences” is omitted from the English text of that article, the French text is the same as that of our 1808 Code, and contains the words: “ * * * et les autre différentes incommodítés qu’un voison peut causer á l’autre * * *.” See 3 Pt. 1 Louisiana Legal Archives: Compiled Edition of the Civil Codes of Louisiana (1940), p. 385.2 It was stated in Straus v. City of New Orleans, 166 La. 1035, 118 So. 125 (1928):
“ * * * In fact the advantage of having access to both the French and English versions was pointed out in section 3 of chapter 29 of the Act of March 31, 1808, adopting the Digest [of the Civil Laws in Force in the Territory, referred to as the Civil Code of 1808], viz.:
“ ‘That if in any of the dispositions contained in the said digest there should be found'any obscurity or ambiguity, fault or omission, both the English and French texts shall be consulted, and shall mutually serve to the interpretation of one and the other.’
“For the same purpose, it was provided in section 2 of the Act of April 12, 1824, p. 172, providing for the adoption and promulgation of the Code of 1825, that the English and the French version of each article should be printed opposite one another.” (Emphasis mine.)
*159In Chretien v. Theard, 2 Mart.(N.S.) 582 (1824), it was said that the two texts of an article should be made to harmonize if possible, and that if one presented a more enlarged meaning or sense than the other, that version should be adopted, for in this way both texts could be given full effect.
We are required to hold that the 1825 Code, like the 1808 Code, included the “other different inconveniences” in the article. We need not inquire why the phrase was omitted from the English text in that Code, although the most obvious reason is that it was. an error or oversight in translation. Reasonable men should agree that the 1870 Code, which is in English only, merely incorporated the English text of the 1825 article. The express language of the Legislature used in the Codes of 1808 and 1825 as well as our jurisprudence requires us, then, to find that “smoke” and “smell” as contained in the 1825 article were merely illustrative and that all other insufferable inconveniences were included; and that the 1870 text following the exact language of the English text of 1825 carries with it the same interpretation: That smoke and smell are merely illustrative and that we are required to exercise control over other inconveniences.
Moreover, our jurisprudence has established that our courts do have the power to protect neighbors from all insufferable inconveniences and no.t merely from those two named in Article 669, and the result reached by the majority holding here is the same. Among the many cases which have considered other inconveniences alleged to be insufferable to neighbors are Froelicher v. Oswald Ironworks, 111 La. 705, 35 So. 821 (1903) (noise, smoke, and odor); Froelicher v. Southern Marine Works, 118 La. 1077, 43 So. 882 (1907) (noise, steam, odors, vibrations) ; Perrin v. Crescent City Stockyard & Slaughterhouse Co, 119 La. 83, 43 So. 938 (1907) (noisome gases and vapors); Tucker v. Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry. Co, 125 La. 689, 51 So. 689 (1910) (soot, cinders, coal, and dust; air poisoned by gases; odors and vapors; noises including the screeching, rumbling, and bumping of the turntable); Orton v. Virginia Carolina Chemical Co, 142 La. 790, 77 So. 632 (1918) (pollution of a stream with poisonous acid and the air with poisonous gases); Dodd v. Glen Rose Gasoline Co, 194 La. 1, 193 So. 349 (1939) (flare burning waste gases and spreading heat, noise, sand, and impurities); McGee v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co, 206 La. 121, 19 So.2d 21 (1944) (smoke, gases, soot, cinders); Devoke v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 211 La. 729, 30 So.2d 816 (1947) (obnoxious smoke including gases, soot, and cinders). There are numerous other decisions from this court and the several Courts of Appeal which have considered many other by-products of men’s activities for determining insufferable inconveniences to neighbors. Much of *161the jurisprudence has cited common law without resort to the Civil Code, a few cases have cited Article 669, and some cases have cited no authority. It is clear that the jurisprudence has constantly and consistently included the “other different inconveniences” even though our present Code article does not contain that phrase.
There is no question, then, that the words “smoke” and “smell” in our present Code article must be interpreted as being illustrative of the “other different inconveniences which one neighbor may cause to another”. In accord with the Chretien and Straus cases, this court should prefer the French text of the 1825 article as more enlarged and inclusive than the English text, and realize that it was the intent of the redactors to carry into the 1825 Code the 1808 article unchanged. An obvious error of omission in the English version of the 1825 article was perpetuated when this version was adopted into our 1870 Code. We should therefore, in the instant case, grant the plaintiffs the relief sought under our Civil' Code Article 669 according to “the rules of the police” and “the customs of the place”, and need not resort to common law concepts or to the common law terminology of nuisance per se and nuisance per accidens.3
I concur in the result.
Rehearing denied.
TATE, J., is of the opinion that a rehearing should be granted.

. I was the author of the majority opinion in the Reymond case, but since I recognized then, and recognize now, that the discussion there of Article 669 was obiter dictum, I do not cite that case as authority.

. The Louisiana Legal Archives, of which the Compiled Edition of the Civil Codes of Louisiana is a part, is a most excellent but neglected library source. The Legislature, the Editorial Committee, and the Louisiana State Law Institute are deserving of deep gratitude from the legal profession in Louisiana for this work.

. Even if my historical interpretation were unsound, which I do not concede, the majority would be in error here in resorting to common law to reach a result contrary to its determination of the intent of an express legislative provision. The Legislature lias spoken through Article 669, and we as judges are required to interpret the legislative enactment either as being illustrative and hence requiring us to protect neighbors from all insufferable inconveniences or as being explicit and limiting and therefore forbidding us to interfere with inconveniences not there named. There is no gap in the legislative expression. While the majority opinion states that Article 669 is explicitly limiting and not illustrative, the actual effect of its opinion is to obviate its conclusion. I can find no support for such juridical methodology and technique in the civil law.