Nuisance

Abstract

Everything that endangers life or health, gives offense to senses, violates the laws of decency, or obstructs reasonable and comfortable use of property is a nuisance.¹ As so defined, nuisance includes a wide range of activities but each case must stand on its own facts and special circumstances. Those engaged in the operation of quarries, gravel pits, and sanitary landfills are particularly vulnerable to accusations of nuisance, although these activities, when properly conducted, are not nuisances per se. If, however, an act in its inherent nature is so hazardous as to make the danger extreme and to make serious injury so probable as to be almost a certainty, it should be held a nuisance per se.² Blasting in populated areas, for example, has been held to be a nuisance per se.

“The term nuisance extends to everything that endangers life or health, gives offense to senses, violates the laws of decency, or obstructs reasonable and comfortable use of property.”

Hall v. Putney, 10 NE 2d at 207