Public Nuisance

Over the past several years, trial lawyers have been working to expand the legal doctrine of public nuisance as a vehicle for new types of profit-generating lawsuits and as a backhanded means of trying to change public policy.

Public nuisance doctrine, grounded in centuries of American and English common law, traditionally allowed government entities to address public actions that violated statutes or involved the possession or use of real property. The legal doctrine that not long ago might have been used to stop neighbors from playing their radios too loudly is now claimed by plaintiff lawyers as a cause to stop the manufacture of products, address broad environmental policy issues, and “remedy” actions that were legal when they took place decades ago.

Column:  Will Plaintiffs' Lawyers Find New Ways to Sue?  They Bet Their Boat They Will

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Latest on Public Nuisance:

• EDITORIAL: Scraping paint
  Akron Beacon Journal  |  February 15, 2009
• Torts for Tots
  Governing  |  February 12, 2009
• Commentators and Some AG’s agree: Nuisance Litigation is Not the Cure for Public Health Problems
  Nuisance Law  |  February 12, 2009
• Dropped Lead Paint Lawsuit a Wake-Up Call to Plaintiffs' Lawyers
  Institute for Legal Reform  |  February 11, 2009
• Court adds $1 billion to Tennessee Valley Authority's air outlays
  Chattanooga Times/Free Press  |  February 10, 2009