Learning How to Read Cases: Two Simple Neighborhood Disputes

Our course opens with two disputes that do not involve the sorts of environmental
problems that you might read about in newspapers, such as toxic chemical contamination, climate
change, and oil spills. Instead, our first two cases involve neighborhood disputes in which one
neighbor sues another for operating a private nuisance. These cases are not hard to read. In fact,
they're sort of fun. But, apart from appreciating the underlying facts of these disputes, we need to
learn how to read these cases critically.

When I say that we want to read these cases critically, I mean we need to see how lawyers
use cases like these to discover the law - in this case the law of private nuisance not just to
understand the results in these two cases but to get a "theory" of nuisance that can be applied to
other types of situations as well. In fact, once you begin to get an idea from these two specific cases
about what a nuisance is generally, its actually pretty easy to see how nuisance law might be
applied to classic environmental disputes like toxic chemical contamination, climate change, and oil
spills.

The most basic thing you should try to get from these cases is a rough hypothesis: when
does the law consider something to be a nuisance? Needless to say, your hypothesis needs to be
able to explain why the court finds there to be a nuisance in one of our cases, but not in the other.

Enough talk. Try the cases!

Albert v. Meadowbrook Swimming Club
Court of Appeals of Maryland 173 Md. 641 (1938)

Several years ago the defendant, a business corporation, built an amusement place [on
property it owned in] a narrow valley [known as the Jones Falls neighborhood].

In 1935 the defendant enlarged its amusement place by adding an outdoor dance floor, with
a shell platform for the musicians stand. In the early summer of 1935, the defendant opened the
dance floor to the public and engaged modern jazz orchestras to play dance music from [9 p.m. to
midnight], six nights per week, and used amplifiers to enhance the volume of sound.

Immediately a number of residents and property owners, located in the hills some 200 feet
or more above the dance floor, were annoyed, and complained in writing to the defendant. Sundry
efforts were made to minimize the alleged nuisance. The mechanical amplifiers were virtually
abandoned; the dancing cut down to four nights a week; expert advice was sought; various
experiments undertaken. Neverthelessthe blare of the brasses, the beating of the drums, etc.,
operated by the musicians in defendants orchestra was, and is, so penetrating and loud that it
cannot be seriously questioned that witnesses, who are doubtless normally constituted, and of
exceptional integrity and intelligence, who live on the sides of the hills, are unable to sleep, to study,
or otherwise lead normal lives in their own homes for four evenings a week during the past and
present summer.

[N]ot every inconveniencewill call forth the restraining power of a court. The injury must
be of such a character as toseriously interfere with the ordinary comfort and enjoyment of it.

[But] noises arising from much less alarming and dangerous origins than blasting may
prove such a nuisance as to justify the remedy of injunction. In a relatively recent case, a defendant,
who kept on his premises so great a number of domestic animals, fowl, hogs, and dogs, that their
noise deprived the complainant neighbor of the reasonable use and comfortable enjoyment of his
adjacent dwelling, was properly enjoined.

It can scarcely be argued that any habitual noise, which is so loud, continuous, insistent, not
inherent to the character of the neighborhood, and unusual therein, that normal men, women, and
children, when occupying their own homes, however distant, are so seriously incommoded that
they cannot sleep, study, read, converse, or concentrate until it stops, is not an unreasonable,
unlawful, invasion of their rights. The injunction prayed must therefore issue.

It is inferable from the evidence that a change of the conditions under which the loud jazz
music is played for the dancers might prevent the disturbance against which the plaintiffs are
entitled to protest. In good weather the dancing is on an open air platform located between an
[enclosed] pavilion and the shell in which the orchestra is installed. On rainy nights the orchestra
plays in [the enclosed pavilion], with the result that the plaintiffs, on such occasions, are relieved of
any discomfort or inconvenience from that source. It was suggested by the defendants president, at
the trial, that the construction of a roof to cover the open air dance floor and to connect with the top
of the shell, would obviate the cause of complaint asserted in this suit. The decree leaves the
defendant free to adopt any effective method of so reducing the volume of sound transmitted from
its property to the homes of the plaintiffs that they will no longer be disturbed in the enjoyment of
the rights which the decree is designed to protect.

Decree for defendant affirmed.


Slaird v. Klewers
Court of Appeals of Maryland 260 Md. 2, 271 A.2d 345 (1970)

This appeal involves a controversy between two next-door neighbors owning and
occupying homes [on] Harmon Road [in] Silver Spring, Maryland [USA]. The principal cause of the
dispute is the building of a swimming pool by one of the neighbors.

Sarah Slaird, and her husband, Walter, owned the property at 2712 Harmon Road. Reinhold
Klewers and [his wife] Patricia owned the property at 2714 Harmon Road. The Slairds had occupied
their home for approximately 21 years. During that occupancy, Mr. and Mrs. Slaird, at a substantial
expenditure of both effort and money, beautified their property by seeding, planting shrubs, plants
and flowers as well as by enclosing it with a fence.

In the complaint, the Slairds allege that the Klewers, who had occupied their property for
[only] one year, installed a swimming pool and patio with a diving board in [their backyard], near
the Slaird property. As a result of the splashing of chlorinated water from the use of the swimming
pool, this treated water, it was alleged, came onto the Slaird property causing damage [to shrubs]. It
was also alleged that the flood lights erected in connection with the swimming pool as well as the
loud noises generated by its use interfered with the Slairds use of their own property, [and] caused
a nuisance.

The Klewers [denied] that the use of the swimming pool was a nuisance, alleging that the
pool was installed properly in accordance with the provisions of the Montgomery County Code,
[arguing] that they had used the pool in a careful and considerate manner limiting the hours of use
in the evening and the number of persons using it in order to be good neighbors.

With the construction of the swimming pool, relations between the Slairds and the Klewers
deteriorated. There were many complaints by the Slairds in regard to noise, lights and water
damage. The Klewers sought to satisfy these complaints by erect[ing] a stockade fence to insure the
privacy of the Slairds. The Klewers also began to turn off the flood lights at an early hour in the
evening and to limit the number of persons using the swimming pool.

The Slairds, however, were not satisfied by these measures. Mrs. Slaird admitted on cross-
examination that she spent a considerable time at her upstairs bedroom observing the activities in
the pool area. She admitted that her testimony in regard to naked people in the pool really referred
to people in bathing suits. She took down the [automobile] license numbers of persons who visited
the Klewers, took copious notes on activities at the pool and took over 1,000 pictures of the
swimming pool, the Slaird property and the property of the Klewers generally. Mrs. Slaird had also
complained several times to the [local] officials.

The testimony indicated that the Slairds from time to time had difficulty with nearly all their
neighbors.

With the consent of counsel and accompanied by them, the trial judge made a personal
inspection of the Slaird and Klewers properties after a hard rain and found that the drainage
problem was not acute.The trial [judge] had found from the evidence at the end of the plaintiffs
case that there was not sufficient evidence to justify injunctive relief for the alleged noise and lights.
At the end of the testimony, the [trial judge] denied all relief and dismissed the bill of complaint
from which an appeal to this Court was timely taken.

The leading case in this court relied upon by the trial court as well as by both parties is
Meadowbrook Swimming Club, Inc. v. Albert, 173 Md. 641, 197 A. 146 (1938) in which the [trial
judges] decree enjoining the loud noise from a jazz band used at the commercial amusement
business of the defendant was affirmed by our predecessors. The Court stated:
The rule which must control is whether the nuisance complained of will or does produce such a
condition of things as in the judgment of reasonable men is naturally productive of actual physical
discomfort to persons of ordinary sensibilities [T]he injury must be of such a character as to
seriously interfere with the ordinary comfort and enjoyment of it.

There was [not] sufficient evidence to establish a nuisance arising from noise in the use of
the swimming pool. The same observations may be made in regard to the flood lights. There was
also testimony from which the [trial judge] could well conclude that the Slairds were not persons of
ordinary sensibilities, tastes, and habits, but were supersensitive, difficult and troublesome.

In summary, we are of the opinion that the findings of fact by the [trial judge] were not
clearly erroneous and that he properly applied the applicable law to the facts so found.

We shall affirm the order dismissing the bill of complaint.