DEFINING A. NUISANCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3795, 13 September 1883, Page 4

DEFINING A. NUISANCE.

The difficulty of defining a nuisance so as to please the lawyers is notorious, but, says the: Pall Mall Budget, common sense will certainly go Avith Mr Justice Stephen in his interpretation of tho term. The plaintiff sought an injunction to restrain the defendant from using a field less than tAvo hundred yards away from the plaintiff's house for tho purpose of pigeon shooting. Tho evidence was that wounded birds came and alighted on the window-sills, or even actually came into tho house. The pigeons sometimes lingered for days. On one occasion two wounded pigeons Avero found in the nursery, naturally to the great distress of the children. '' Ah,'' said tho defending counsel, " that is no nuisance ; a nuisance must be something that interferes Avith the physical enjoyment of a man's property." Whereupon the learned Judge delivered himself of tho following most wholesome opinion: "I do not consider that my nerves aro particularly delicate, but if I heard noises of that kind in my house every Saturday and found wounded pigeons fluttering about in that ay ay, I should say that it Avould very much interfere with the physical enjoyment of that house, ancl that I should not 'take such a house if I could help it. Whether pigeon-shooting is or is not a legal practice is a matter upon Avhich I am rather bound here not to give an opinion, but I do say that it is to many people an extremely disgusting practice, ancl if it is so carried o"n as to annoy the people a. ho are disgusted, it must be taken away ; and if it is a difficult thing to find places for shooting pigeons under these circumstances so much the better."