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What situations can give rise to a claim?

private nuisance is a ‘violation of real property rights’. It involves substantial interference with the claimant’s ordinary enjoyment of their land, often by noise or smell, or by encroachment or actual physical damage to their property. Nuisance may be caused by inaction or omission as well as by positive activity, and there is a central principle of ‘give and take, live and let live’.

Interference with the enjoyment of an easement relating to the claimant’s land may also constitute a nuisance, the right to light being the most common type of claim in this category.

Nuisance is sometimes broken down into the following categories, although they are merely examples under the broad umbrella of ‘violation of property rights’:

1. •

   encroachment on a neighbour's land

2. •

   direct physical injury to a neighbour's land

3. •

   interference with a neighbour's quiet enjoyment of their land

It is said that ‘the categories of nuisance are not closed’ and that ‘anything short of direct trespass…which materially interferes with the claimant’s enjoyment of rights in land