Nuisance (law)

“ In the case of the system under discussion, instinct has taught the layman to call it a public nuisance, which, if so, is theoretically about the same thing as death, inasmuch as, in the eye of the law, that which is a public nuisance has forfeited the right to exist. ”

“ If street musicians are a nuisance, let them be legislated against for being a nuisance. If begging is really wrong, a logical law should be imposed on all beggars, and not merely on those whom particular persons happen to regard as being also nuisances. ”

“ Perhaps no better definition could be suggested than that which may 903be framed by conveniently using that important legal fictitious person who has taken such a large part in the development of our law during the last fifty years—the reasonably prudent, reasonably courageous and not unreasonably sensitive man. Precisely this same standard is employed throughout the law of nuisance in determining what degree of annoyance on the part of one’s neighbor one must submit to, and what degree of such annoyance is excessive and the subject of an action for damages or a suit for an injunction. ”

“ Where a party becomes responsible to the public, by undertaking a public duty, he is liable, though the injury may have arisen from the negligence of his servant or agent. So, in cases of public nuisances, whether the act was done by the party as a servant, or in any other capacity, you are liable to an action at the suit of any person who suffers. Those, however, are cases where the real ground of the liability is the public duty, or the commission of the public nuisance. There is also a class of cases in which the law permits a contract to be turned into a tort ”

“ The fact that the magazine was liable to such a contingency, which could not be guarded against or averted by the greatest degree of care and vigilance, evinces its dangerous character, and might in some localities render it a private nuisance. In such a case the rule which exonerates a party engaged in a lawful business, when free from negligence, has no application. The keeping or manufacturing of gunpowder or of fire-works does not necessarily constitute a nuisance per se. ”

“ The court of equity, also, pursuing the analogy of the law, that a party may maintain a private action for special damage, even in case of a public nuisance, will now take jurisdiction in case of a public nuisance, at the instance of a private person; where he is in imminent danger of suffering a special injury, for which, under the circumstances of the case, the law would not afford an adequate remedy. ”

“ If they are caught in their own toils, and are themselves the sufferers, it is a legitimate consequence of their violation of the rules of law and morality. Those who violate these laws must suffer the penalty. ”

“ Congress might punish such an act criminally, but until they shall so provide, an indictment will not lie in the courts of the United States for an obstruction which is a public nuisance. But a public nuisance is also a private nuisance, where a special and an irremediable mischief is done to an individual. ”

“ To censure guilt, my lords, is undoubtedly necessary, and to inquire into the conduct of men in power, incontestably just; but by the laws both of heaven and earth, the means as well as the end are prescribed, rectum recte, legitimum legitime faciendum; we must not only propose a good end in our conduct, but must attain it by that method which equity directs, and the law prescribes. ”

“ The difference between a public nuisance and a private nuisance is that the one affects the people at large and the other simply the individual. The quality of the wrongs is the same, and the jurisdiction of the courts over them rests upon the same principles and goes to the same extent. Of course, circumstances may exist in one case, which do not in another, to induce the court to interfere or to refuse to interfere by injunction ”

“ The wrong-doer should be taught that he is just as guilty, and just as certain of punishment for his crime, as if all the Gods in heaven were put to death to atone for his sin; the penalty being inseparable from the act.
21. What would be thought of the government that should punish the law-maker instead of the law-breaker? This is exactly what the atonement amounts to; so that the law-maker falls a victim to the penalty of his own laws. It is God the law-maker dying for man the law-breaker. ”

“ Thus we see the Legislature have taken the utmost Care not only to punish, but even to prevent this Vice of Drunkenness, which the Preamble of one of the foregoing Statutes calls a loathsome and odious Sin, and the Root and Foundation of many other enormous Sins, as Murder, &c. Nor doth the Wisdom of our Law stop here. Our cautious Ancestors have endeavoured to remove the Temptation, and, in a great measure, to take away from the People their very Power of offending this way. ”

“ Public Nuisances.—A private individual cannot take legal proceedings in respect to a public nuisance, unless he has sustained some special and direct damage beyond that suffered by the general public. ”

“ I think that among other things the Act is a bill of attainder; that it imposes cruel, unusual and savage punishments for thought, speech, writing, petition and assembly; and that it stigmatizes people for their beliefs, associations and views about politics, law, and government. The Act has borrowed the worst features of old laws intended to put shackles on the minds and bodies of men, to make them confess to crime, to make them miserable while in this country, and to make it a crime even to attempt to get out of it. ”

“ From the popular hatred and abhorrence of illegal confinement, torture and extortion of confessions of violations of the 'law of the land' evolved the fundamental idea that no man's life, liberty or property be forfeited as criminal punishment for violation of that law until there had been a charge fairly made and fairly tried in a public tribunal free of prejudice, passion, excitement and tyrannical power. ”

“ When the growth of social conditions led to new temptations or the appearance of a new criminal class, and particular varieties of crime became conspicuous, the only remedy was to declare that some offence should be 'felony without benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by death. By unsystematic and spasmodic legislation the criminal law became so savage as to shock every man of common humanity. ”

“ The law is remiss if it permit a mentally unsound person to act on his own behalf, or others to act for him, without its sanction; and is it, we ask, consonant with English jurisprudence to detain a man against his will, in other words, to imprison him, even in his own house, and under the authority of his own immediate relatives? As soon as insanity has declared itself, so soon, we maintain, should both the person and the property of the sufferer come under the protection of the law ”

“ And for all this it is utterly idle to place the blame on those qualities of human nature which have led to the violation of the law. Of those qualities some are reprehensible and some are not only blameless but commendable. The great guilt is not that of the law-breakers but that of the lawmakers. ”

“ It is presumed, that no person, actually under a commission of lunacy, could legally dispose of his property by will, because such instrument confides the management of his affairs to others. But in the judgment before cited, and where the law is expounded by the highest and most competent authority, it appears, that the legal definition of a lunatic, implies a person interchangeably visited by insanity and reason. ”

“ To our mind, this state of things proves a grievous defect in the law of lunacy. Every person has an inherent right to the protection of the law; yet practically, if insane, he does not at all, as a matter of course, obtain it: his malady and position may very probably be unknown, and he may be helpless, or otherwise debarred from making it known. ”

“ In Kansas every liquor selling place is not only a declared nuisance, but a constitutional outlaw. And in the case from Pennsylvania where a private individual had abated a nuisance, the court held: "We consider it also well settled, as is claimed by this defendant, that a common nuisance may be removed, or, in legal language, abated by any individual. Any man, says Lord Hale, may justify the removal of a common nuisance, either by land or by Nyater, because every man is concerned in it."
It is not only the privilege of the patriotic citizen to abate a dangerous nuisance but it is commendable. ”

“ In yesterday's issue you took occasion to speak of the organ-grinding nuisance, about which I hope you will let me ask you the following questions: Why must decent people all over town suffer these pestilential beggars to go about torturing our senses, and practically blackmailing the listeners into paying them to go [Pg 3] away? Is it not a most ridiculous excuse on the part of the police, when ordered to arrest these vagrants, to tell a citizen that the city license exempts these public nuisances from arrest? ”

“ Then the appropriate punishment for every outrage against penal law would always follow every perpetration of unlawful deeds; for each fee offered by such enemies of mankind as commit atrocious crimes, would be considered and rejected either as the price of property wickedly gained—of innocence utterly ruined—of character irretrievably blasted, or of life criminally taken away. ”

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ And if we do; then our affection or respect for the law is entirely one-sided and impure. And the people who make laws and devise punishments upon those unequal premises are not at all likely to make their laws just, or their forms of punishment wise. ”

“ If the instances were numerous, open, and tolerated, they would be regarded as measuring the decay of the public morals and the degeneracy of the times. No prophetic spirit would be needed to foretell the consequences near at hand. The same thing in lesser legislation, if not so prolific of alarming evils, is not less vicious in itself, nor less to be condemned. The vital principle of both is the same. The evils of the latter are of sufficient magnitude to invite the most serious consideration. The prohibition of the law rests upon a solid foundation. ”

“ Is it not madness that those very people who, by their situations, are most liable to the abuse of their passions, are subservient to no law, and acknowledge no tribunal which can call them to account? Misery is near, and promised vengeance is far off ”

“ So that wholesale homicide, condemned alike by religion, by equity, by law, is approved, and the mildest punishment of it blamed; while vulpicide, committed in defence of property, and condemned neither by religion, nor by equity, nor by any law save that of sportsmen, excites an anger that cries aloud for positive penalties! ”

“ For one man restrained by the fear of the criminal law, a vast number are restrained by the 'fear of the disapprobation of their neighbours, which is the moral sanction, or by the fear of punishment in a future state of existence, which is the religious sanction, or by the fear of their own disapprobation, which may be called the conscientious sanction, and may be regarded as a compound case of the other 'two.' [123] An objection, therefore, to coercion would be an objection to all the bonds which [319] make association possible ”

“ The plea of anger or of drunkenness—as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason—relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" ”

“ Be it further enacted, That if any person or persons shall write, publish, advise, entreat or persuade, privately or publicly, any class of persons, or any individual, to resist any of the laws of this State calculated to molest or disturb the good people and peaceable citizens of the State, such persons shall be subject to the penalties of the first section of this act; and if an attorney at law, he shall be stricken from the roll of attorneys and be prevented from practicing in any court in this State. ”

“ The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the [Pg 258] individual, "crime." ”

“ In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi.”
“Ah, my God!”
“And the penalty is death!”
“God be merciful to me a sinner!”
“By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy, thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha’penny, paying but a trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem expurgatis in statu quo—and the penalty is death by the halter, without ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy.” ”

“ The legislators, (or rather lawyers, whose opinions, when alive, were interested and venal, but which after their death become of decisive authority, and are sovereign arbiters of the lives and fortunes of men) , terrified by the condemnation of some innocent person, have burdened the law with pompous and useless formalities, the scrupulous observance of which will place anarchical impunity on the throne of justice ”