Court Opinion

ID: 9666031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:02:55.026113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:22.724613
License: Public Domain

HAWTHORNE, Justice
(dissenting).
There was presented for our consideration originally and on rehearing only one question: Is a funeral home by its very ■nature such a business that when located in a strictly residential area its operation will so annoy and inconvenience the residents 'that they will be deprived of the enjoyment of their homes? There was then and there ■is now no disagreement on the general law relative to nuisances, which, as far as I can see, is all that is discussed in the opinion on rehearing. In that opinion there is no discussion at all of the extent of annoyance and inconvenience that a funeral home in a residential area will cause the adjoining residents or landowners.
If the answer to the question presented by this case is in the affirmative, the establishment of the business would be prohibited under LSA-Civil Code Articles 667, 668, and 669 upon proof that the district is strictly residential, and under the courts’ authority to issue injunctions the respondents would be entitled to injunctive relief. If the answer to this question is in the negative, they have no right to interfere with the use that relator proposes to make of its property. I can only conclude from the lack of discussion of the real. question in .the opinion on rehearing that the reasons given for answering it in the affirmative on original hearing are unanswerable. I cannot believe that the average person in this jurisdiction is any less sensitive to the depressing effects of a funeral home than is the average person in the common-law jurisdictions where it has been concluded that as a matter of fact funeral homes are by their very nature so depressing that their close proximity deprives one of the enjoyment of his home and that they can be enjoined when they seek to intrude themselves into an exclusively residential district.
*91The Code provisions in my opinion do not make the relator’s privilege of using its 'property as it pleases any more important than the respondents’ right to use and enjoy their premises. A comparative evaluation of the conflicting interests in this case has .convinced me that the gravity of the ■annoyance and inconvenience that will be caused to the respondents by the business that' the relator proposes to establish is such that the relator ought to be enjoined if the respondents can show that the district is exclusively residential.
I -respectfully dissent.