Nuisance Law and Environmental Protection: An Analysis of the Enforcement of Injunctions

This new book about the law’s important contribution to environmental protection takes a practical – and novel – approach to nuisance law, focusing on the social consequences of the enforcement of nuisance injunctions.

The analysis is structured around in-depth fieldwork into a selection of famous nuisance actions concerning serious pollution arising from fast-developing industry. In each case it is the consequences of the award of an injunction - the ‘what happened next?’ - that are explored.

The common law began a 'green' industrial revolution; there are many lessons to be learnt for the future development of the law with regard to remedies and the complex relationship between nuisance law and administrative controls, particularly in town and country planning.

Studied in depth are:-

• The common law cleansing of provincial ‘great stinks’, Attorney General v Birmingham Corporation
• A trilogy of nuisance actions involving a nouveau rural gent, Tipping v St Helens Smelting
• The tragedy of the common law’s ‘voluntarism’, Farnworth v Manchester Corporation
• Freedom from pollution and the right to sleep in the age of Silent Spring, Halsey v Esso Petroleum