## Facts

- Hentz owned and occupied a half-acre lot in Hempstead, New York, with a dwelling and shop fronting on Main Street.
- The Long Island Railroad Company located its line along Main Street and laid track in front of Hentz’s premises.
- In August 1851, the railroad removed the prior track and laid a new track in the street adjacent to Hentz’s property and continued operating trains there.
- Trains regularly passed and often stopped opposite Hentz’s premises.
- Hentz alleged the operations created danger to his family, caused offensive smoke to enter his house, and diminished the value of his property, asserting he suffered greater injury than other owners along the line.
- Hentz sought $2,000 in damages and an injunction restraining the railroad from running trains in front of his property.
- The railroad offered evidence that the relaid track improved the area’s appearance and that the railroad’s public benefits outweighed inconveniences to abutting owners.

## Issues

1. Whether a railroad’s lawfully authorized construction and operation on a public street can constitute an actionable private nuisance to an abutting landowner based on smoke, noise, danger, and reduced property value.
2. Whether equitable relief may restrain ordinary railroad operations in a public street when the alleged harms are incidents of a public improvement.

## Decision

- The court reversed the order granting temporary injunctive relief.
- The injunction was dissolved, and the railroad was permitted to continue operating trains on Main Street.
- The court declined to treat the ordinary incidents of lawful railroad operation in a public street as a private nuisance warranting an injunction.

## Legal Principles

- A use of a public street carried out under public authority is not, without more, an actionable private nuisance merely because it produces smoke, noise, danger, or depreciation commonly incident to that use.
- Harms that are general incidents of a lawful public improvement are ordinarily treated as public inconveniences rather than private wrongs supporting injunctions by individual abutters.
- Equity will not restrain a major public or quasi-public work where an injunction would impose disproportionate public consequences, absent unlawful conduct or extraordinary, particularized injury beyond the usual incidents of authorized operation.
- Claims based on specific wrongful acts in operation (e.g., negligence causing distinct physical harm) are conceptually distinct from a broad effort to bar an authorized enterprise from using the street.

## Conclusion

The court refused to enjoin a lawfully authorized railroad from operating on a public street in front of an abutting owner’s property, holding that ordinary smoke, noise, danger, and related loss in value were not, by themselves, a private nuisance justifying equitable relief.


Hentz v. The Long Island R.R. Co., 13 Barb. 646 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1852)