Public nuisance
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 37 U.S. 91 - The Mayor Recorder Aldermen and Common Council of Georgetown v. The Alexandria Canal Company and William Turnbull · 1838Most cited · 128 citing opinions
definition and remedies
as the Potomac river is a navigable stream, a part of the jus publicum, any obstruction to its navigation would, upon the most established principles, be what is declared by law to be a public nuisance. A public nuisance being the subject to criminal jurisdiction, the ordinary and regular proceeding at law is by indictment or information, by which the nuisance may be abated; and the person who caused it may be punished. If any particular individual shall have sustained special damage from the erection of it, he may maintain a private action for such special damage; because to that extent he has suffered beyond his portion of injury, in common with the community at large.
How often courts cite the cases defining “Public nuisance”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “Public nuisance” — 146 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1838–1914
Speaking generally, the obstruction of a public highway is a public nuisance, and the trend of authority is, that an individual cannot maintain a bill to enjoin such nuisance unless he can show that he has suffered, or will suffer therefrom, special and peculiar injury or damage to himself, as distinguished from injury or damage to the general public. Moreover, such special and peculiar injury or damage must be direct, and not purely consequential, and must be different in kind, and not merely in degree, from that sustained by the community at large.
private standing