## Facts

- A corporation operated a clinic and hospital in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.
- The owners of a music store across the street installed and used an outdoor loudspeaker/amplifier projecting toward the hospital to broadcast music for advertising.
- The broadcasts were audibly distinct in hospital rooms and were played for long periods during the day and sometimes later.
- Hospital personnel complained that the noise disturbed patients’ rest and recovery; evidence indicated some patients required sedatives, left before completing treatment, or avoided admission.
- The hospital alleged ongoing and irreparable harm, lack of an adequate remedy at law, and also alleged the broadcasts violated a municipal ordinance regulating amplifying devices.
- The store owners asserted the area was a business district where such advertising was a normal incident of commerce and disputed the severity of interference.

## Issues

1. Whether defendants’ loudspeaker broadcasts constituted a private nuisance by unreasonably and substantially interfering with the hospital’s use and enjoyment of its property.
2. Whether injunctive relief was appropriate to prevent continuing harm from the ongoing broadcasts.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the trial court’s judgment denying relief.
- The court held the loudspeaker operation, as conducted, was an unreasonable and unlawful use of defendants’ property and amounted to a nuisance given the hospital’s function and the interference shown.
- The case was remanded with directions to enter an injunction restraining defendants from operating the loudspeaker in the nuisance-causing manner.

## Legal Principles

- A landowner’s right to use property is limited by the duty not to make an unreasonable use that substantially interferes with a neighbor’s use and enjoyment of land.
- Nuisance turns on substantiality and unreasonableness, assessed in context, including the locality and the character and needs of the affected premises.
- A business district does not confer a privilege to create continuous or unusual noise that materially interferes with a neighboring hospital’s operations and patients’ comfort and health.
- Injunction is proper where harm is ongoing or threatened, not readily compensable by damages (including effects on patient health and institutional operation), and the defendant intends to continue the offending conduct.
- Ordinance allegations may support the claim, but common-law nuisance can independently justify injunctive relief when unreasonable interference is proven.

## Conclusion

The court ordered injunctive relief because the defendants’ continuous outdoor loudspeaker advertising, directed toward a nearby hospital, substantially and unreasonably interfered with patient care and the hospital’s use of its property, even though the properties were located in a business district.


Clinic & Hospital, Inc. v. McConnell, 236 S.W.2d 384 (Mo. Ct. App. 1951)