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29 Ind. 517

State v. Taylor

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided May 15, 1868

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1868-05-15

<p>Nuisance.- — Information.—An information for a nuisance, charging the defendant with urinating in a spring of water, near a public highway, from which many persons in the vicinity, and travelers on the highway, were accustomed to -drink, thereby rendering the water of the spring unfit for use, &c., was held to bo good.</p>

Relies on Sloan v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1868-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 2007

5 state decisions

20186818701880189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Ray, J.

¶1The information charged the defendant with urinating in a spring, of water near a public highway, out of which many persons in the vicinity, and travelers along the road, were accustomed to use water, thereby rendering the spring unfit for use, and indecent, and to the obstruction of the free use of the water thereof by the citizens of the State. The information was quashed, on the ground that it did not charge a public offense.

JD. JE. Williamson, Attorney General, for the State.

¶2Our statute, perhaps, gives as accurate a definition of the term nuisance, as understood at common law, as can be found elsewhere: “Whatever is injurious to health, or in-

¶3decent, or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as essentially to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.” 2 G. & TL, § 628, p. 288. If the injury were limited to an individual, it gave a private right of action; if it affected the public, it was the subject of a public prosecution. That the present information is within the common law definition is, we think, recognized in Sloan v. The State, 8 Ind. 312. The motion to quash should have been overruled.

¶4The judgment is reversed.

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