Court Opinion

ID: 9518297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:49:20.239183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:13.673953
License: Public Domain

Grimes, J.,
dissenting: The plaintiff’s writ alleges that “the noise from the planes ‘warming up’ for take off, make such a great amount of noise that it is impossible for the people in the house to converse or talk on the telephone, the house vibrates and the glass in the windows shake and that more than 20 panes of glass have been broken by said vibration in the winter of 1963-1964, that it is often times impossible to sleep and there is no peace or quiet in their home and that life has become unbearable because of said noise.”
The majority of the court says this declaration does not set forth a cause of action based on inverse condemnation. I disagree.
Our court long ago decided that in our state at least, the term “property” refers to “the right of any person to possess, use, enjoy and dispose of a thing” and is not limited to the thing itself, and that a person’s property is “taken” for public use so as to entitle him to “just compensation” under our Constitution when a physical interference substantially subverts one of these rights even though the thing itself is not taken. Eaton v. B. C. & M. RR., 51 N. H. 504, 511 (1872). The majority opinion recognizes that the Eaton case applied the principle of what is now called “inverse condemnation.”
The Eaton case also holds that the plaintiff may recover whether he is being “wholly deprived of the use of his land, or only partially deprived of it.” Id., 512. Also under Eaton, the *414plaintiff’s right of recovery is not defeated because the defendant’s activities are “proper. ” Id., 515, 516.
Surely the sound waves invading the plaintiff’s property in the case before us constitute as much of a physical interference with his use as the water which occasionally entered upon the plaintiff’s land in the Eaton case. But in any event I think a distinction based upon the nature of the invasion rather than the effect of it is unjustified. Batten v. United States, 306 F. 2d 580, 585 (10th Cir. 1962) dissenting opinion. Even the majority in the Batten case recognizes this but would restrict recovery to cases involving complete deprivation of use, a doctrine which was rejected in Eaton.
The court cites Batten v. United States, supra, but in my judgment our Eaton case answers every proposition upon which the majority opinion in Batten is based. In addition, Eaton establishes a right in the plaintiff under our own constitution quite independent of the Constitution of the United States upon which Mr. Batten relied.
The declaration in the case at bar alleges that the sound waves from the planes invade plaintiff’s premises to the extent that conversation, telephoning and sleep are not only difficult but impossible and also that they cause actual physical damage to the house itself. Twenty window panes broken in one winter is no trivial interference and we have no way of knowing without evidence what the long-range effect of the vibration and shaking of the house will have upon it. Certainly the declaration alleges more than mere inconvenience or annoyance for which I agree no recovery can be had.
Here we have allegations of interference with use and enjoyment which unquestionably is “sufficiently direct, sufficiently peculiar, and of sufficient magnitude to cause us to conclude that fairness and justice, as between the State and the citizen, requires the burden imposed to be borne by the public and not by the individual alone. ” Batten v. United States, supra (Murrah, Chief Judge, dissenting) 587.
The difficulty in determining where to draw the line between such a substantial interference with use as to constitute a taking and that which does not should not deter us from permitting recovery in a clear case. Eaton v. B. C. & M. RR., supra, 521. Nor should any policy consideration relating to the public need for airports affect our decision. I agree with Judge Smith when *415ninety-six years ago he said that great public convenience and benefit “may afford an excellent reason for taking the plaintiff’s land in the constitutional manner, but not for taking it without compensation. If the work is one of great public benefit, the public can afford to pay for it.” Eaton v. B. C. & M. RR., supra, 518.
The plaintiff’s right to compensation cannot be made to depend upon legislative benevolence, as the majority suggest, as it is a right to which he is entitled under the Constitution. Eaton v. B. C. & M. RR., supra, 510, 511; N. H. Water Resources Board v. Pera, 108 N. H. 18.
I am unimpressed with the rationale of those cases which confine inverse condemnation to overflights. A person’s property rights can be damaged as greatly by sound waves traveling horizontally as by those traveling vertically, and to draw a distinction is to ignore reality.
We are dealing here with an important and fundamental individual right, the roots of which reach back to Magna Carta. It is one which deserves to be stoutly defended and liberally construed. It is one which we should not deny to this plaintiff because the means by which her property was taken was neither known to nor foreseen by the Barons of England or the Framers of our Constitution.
The court while denying the constitutional right has at least recognized that the plaintiff has set forth a cause of action based on nuisance. This I think is a poor substitute from the standpoint of both parties.