Public Nuisance is a Tort
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David Bullock
Abstract
In a well-known article, Thomas Merrill posed the question “Is Public Nuisance a Tort?”, ultimately answering the question in the negative: “public nuisance is not, and never was, a tort.” This article reaches a different answer to Merrill’s question. It argues that Merrill was wrong to conclude that the characterisation of public nuisance as tort was a recent invention and that public nuisance claims are not privately actionable by individual plaintiffs. The article presents a defence of the private action for public nuisance and concludes, on both an historical and a theoretical account, that public nuisance has long been understood as a tort at common law, and for good reason.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Arthur Ripstein, Jutta Brunnée, Andrew Green and Nadia Sussman for their comments. I am also grateful for the feedback of Gregory Keating and Ellen Bublick at the Journal of Tort Law.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Public Nuisance is a Tort
- Self-Driving Cars and Some (Unintended) Regulatory Barriers in India: A Road Less Travelled?
- Guest Editor: Max Larnerd, University of Arizona
- Pure Economic Losses from the Russian Perspective
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Public Nuisance is a Tort
- Self-Driving Cars and Some (Unintended) Regulatory Barriers in India: A Road Less Travelled?
- Guest Editor: Max Larnerd, University of Arizona
- Pure Economic Losses from the Russian Perspective
