public nuisance doctrine

In July 2004, two groups of plaintiffs filed separate complaints in the Southern District of New York against the same five major electric power companies. The first group included eight States and New York City. The second group joined three nonprofit land trusts. The defendants were four private companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned corporation. According to the complaints, the defendants are the five largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States, with collective annual emissions of 650 million tons constituting 25 percent of emissions from the domestic electric power sector. The plaintiffs asserted that by contributing to global warming, the defendants’ carbon-dioxide emissions created a substantial and unreasonable interference with public rights, in violation of the federal common law of interstate nuisance or state tort law. The States and New York City alleged that public lands, infrastructure, and health were at risk from climate change. The trusts urged that climate change would destroy habitats for animals and rare species on land they owned and conserved. All plaintiffs sought injunctive relief requiring each defendant to cap its carbon dioxide emissions and then reduce them by a specified percentage each year for at least a decade. The District Court dismissed both suits as presenting non-justiciable political questions. The Second Circuit reversed. On threshold questions, the Court of Appeals held that the suits were not barred by the political question doctrine and that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged Article III standing. Turning to the merits, the Second Circuit held that all plaintiffs had stated a claim under the federal common law of nuisance and that the Clean Air Act did not displace federal common law. Responding to the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency undertook greenhouse gas regulation. In December 2009, the Agency concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. EPA issued a joint final rule regulating emissions from light-duty vehicles and initiated a joint rulemaking covering medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. EPA also began phasing in requirements that new or modified major greenhouse gas emitting facilities use the best available control technology and commenced a rulemaking under section 111 of the Act to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing fossil-fuel fired powerplants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2010. Four Members of the Court would hold that at least some plaintiffs have Article III standing under Massachusetts v. EPA, while four Members would hold that none of the plaintiffs have Article III standing. The Court therefore affirmed, by an equally divided Court, the Second Circuit’s exercise of jurisdiction and proceeded to the merits.

In 1962 Detroit adopted an Anti-Skid Row Ordinance that identified specific property uses as especially injurious to neighborhoods when concentrated. Effective November 2, 1972, the city amended the ordinance to add adult motion picture theaters and adult bookstores to the list of regulated uses. The amendments prohibited an adult theater from locating within 1,000 feet of any two other regulated uses or within 500 feet of a residential area. An adult theater was defined as any enclosed building used for presenting material distinguished or characterized by an emphasis on Specified Sexual Activities or Specified Anatomical Areas. Those terms were defined to include specific sexual acts and body parts. The respondents operated two theaters subject to the amended ordinance. The Nortown, an established theater, began exhibiting adult films in March 1973. The Pussy Cat, a converted corner gas station operating as a mini theater, was denied a certificate of occupancy because of its plan to show adult films. Both locations fell within 1,000 feet of two other regulated uses, and the Pussy Cat also stood less than 500 feet from a residential area. The respondents filed separate actions against city officials in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The District Court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

B. W. Foster owned a mink ranch located in a rural area one and one-half miles east of North Bend in King County, Washington. The ranch occupied seven and one-half acres and included seven sheds housing mink in welded wire cages with wood roofs. The property sat about two blocks from U.S. Highway No. 10 and near Northern Pacific Railway tracks and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad tracks. Preston Mill Company engaged in logging operations in the adjacent area. Early in May 1951, the company began constructing a road approximately two and one-quarter miles southwest of the mink ranch and twenty-five hundred feet above it along Rattlesnake Ledge. To build the road, the company used explosives, setting off blasts twice daily at noon and the end of the workday, with charges usually limited to fifty pounds and occasionally reaching one hundred pounds. The whelping season for mink begins about May 1 and lasts about two and one-half weeks, during which mothers are highly excitable and may kill their kittens if disturbed by noises or vibrations. Roy A. Peterson, the ranch manager, observed that the blasting caused tremendous vibrations that rattled boxes on the cages, leading mother mink to run back and forth and kill their young. Before the season progressed far, thirty-five or forty kittens had been killed. Peterson informed the manager of Preston Mill Company about the losses. Although no request was made to stop the blasting, the company reduced the amount of explosives per shot from nineteen or twenty sticks to fourteen sticks. Officials of the company noted that halting road construction during the whelping period would have been impractical due to scheduling and expense concerns. Foster filed suit against Preston Mill Company seeking damages only for losses occurring after the company received notice of the effects on the mink. After a trial to the court without a jury on a second amended complaint alleging absolute liability and alternatively nuisance, the trial court entered judgment for Foster in the amount of $1,953.68 based on absolute liability for post-notice damages. The court found no public nuisance, and Foster conceded that the trial court had ruled in the company's favor on the nuisance claim. Preston Mill Company appealed the judgment.

The New York legislature passed a labor law in 1897 that regulated bakeries and confectionery establishments. Section 110 of article 8 of that law stated that no employee shall be required or permitted to work more than sixty hours in any one week or more than ten hours in any one day. This applied unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day on the last day of the week. The plaintiff in error violated the one hundred and tenth section of article 8, chapter 415, of the Laws of 1897, known as the labor law of the State of New York, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully required and permitted an employe working for him to work more than sixty hours in one week. The charge arose from a voluntary contract rather than any use of physical force. The judgments of the County Court of Oneida County, the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals of New York upheld the conviction under the statute, although several judges dissented. The record indicated that the state courts had viewed the law as a measure relating to public health. The case came before the Supreme Court of the United States after argument on February 23 and 24, 1905. The Court rendered its decision on April 17, 1905.