Court Opinion

ID: 9587404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:21:47.073115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:43.884778
License: Public Domain

Justice PLEICONES:
I respectfully dissent, and would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals setting aside the jury verdict in this case.
In my opinion, the facts of this case demonstrate that respondents’ actions were not an attempt to deal with the “common enemy,” but instead establish that respondents were simply preparing their land for agricultural use. To hold, as the majority does, that these actions implicate the common enemy doctrine flirts with adoption of an expansive view of the “New Jersey Rule” which we rejected in Irwin v. Michelin Tire Corp., 288 S.C. 221, 341 S.E.2d 783 (1986).3 Since, however, the parties tried this matter as if the doctrine were applicable, I agree that we should review whether there was any evidence of nuisance per se here.
*514I find no evidence of nuisance per se warranting submission of this case to the jury. The nuisance exception to the common enemy rule requires, as a predicate for its application, the existence of evidence that surface water has accumulated. See, e.g., Deason v. Southern Ry. Co., 142 S.C. 328, 140 S.E. 575 (1927)(jury issue whether defendant’s creation of pond by raising embankment and stopping up drainage ditch created a nuisance per se); Baltzeger v. Carolina Midland Ry. Co., 54 S.C. 242, 32 S.E. 358 (1899)(grant of demurrer on nuisance per se reversed where complaint alleged defendant constructed embankment and ditches causing surface water to accumulate and stagnate); Suddeth v. Knight, 280 S.C. 540, 314 S.E.2d 11 (Ct.App.1984)(jury issue where evidence that defendant’s construction caused standing water 40 inches deep to accumulate and stagnate on plaintiffs property for 6-10 months a year); see also F.P. Hubbard & R.L. Felix, The South Carolina Law of Torts (2nd ed.1997) pp. 222-223 (“... accumulations of water can have other effects in addition to direct impacts like flooding — providing a place for mosquitoes to breed, for example; and there may be a nuisance for these other effects”). That the nuisance per se exception is limited to situations where the accumulation of surface water leads to secondary problems, and that it is those secondary effects which give rise to the nuisance is exemplified by the requirement that one alleging the nuisance must show that “it has become dangerous, at all times and under all circumstances, to life, health, or property.” Baltzeger at 360. Unlike the majority, I find no evidence of continuing danger in the possibility of periodic flooding, nor do I perceive any danger to life, health, or property in the reduced productivity of petitioner’s turf farming operation.
While I am not unsympathetic to the impact of respondents’ agricultural development on petitioner’s property, this is a situation damnum absque injuria. For these reasons, I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision.

. "Obviously, every construction project of any magnitude could decrease the absorption, seepage, and percolation rate of the land, and potentially allow every lower riparian or adjoining landowner to institute a cause of action. If there is to be such a fundamental change in the law, we believe that it should be by legislative action and not judicial decision.” Irwin at 225, 341 S.E.2d at 785.