## Facts

- Neighboring owners held adjacent oceanfront parcels in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts: plaintiffs owned a developed estate; defendant owned an undeveloped lot accessible by a right of way over plaintiffs’ land.
- After years of disputes and litigation over access and buildability, plaintiffs successfully challenged the defendant’s building permit.
- Beginning in August 1999 and continuing for several years, the defendant engaged in conduct the trial judge found retaliatory and directed at plaintiffs’ use of their property.
- The defendant placed construction debris along the boundary, including broken concrete, pipe, and rusted metal equipment, and brought in a full-size freight container.
- The defendant elevated the visual impact by placing debris on top of the freight container and, when plaintiffs tried to block the view with a fence, stacking debris higher.
- The defendant placed an office trailer on blocks so its windows rose above the fence and looked toward plaintiffs’ pool area, contributing to an intrusive, surveilling effect.
- The defendant placed portable toilets near the pool area, arranged large parties on the lot, and repeatedly landed a helicopter on the property in a manner found disruptive and unsafe.
- Plaintiffs brought a jury-waived private nuisance action; the trial court found liability, awarded damages (rental-value diminution and barrier costs), and entered a permanent injunction restricting specified conduct.

## Issues

1. Whether intentionally created visual blight and related disturbances on the defendant’s land can constitute an unreasonable, intentional invasion of plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment actionable as private nuisance.
2. Whether damages measured by diminution in rental value and barrier construction costs were proper, and whether damages were incorrectly awarded for time periods when the nuisance was not occurring or had been ordered abated.
3. Whether the permanent injunction was overbroad by restricting conduct defined in generalized terms rather than targeting wrongful acts.
4. Whether res judicata barred the nuisance claim based on prior litigation between the parties.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the finding of private nuisance, concluding plaintiffs proved an unreasonable, intentional invasion of their interest in the use and enjoyment of land.
- The court held that unreasonable aesthetic conditions created or maintained on one’s property may be actionable as a private nuisance when they substantially interfere with neighbors’ use and enjoyment and are unreasonable in context.
- The court approved using diminution in rental value as a compensatory measure and allowed recovery of reasonable mitigation costs (the cost of constructing a barrier).
- The court modified the damages award to exclude periods before the defendant began the offending conduct and after the defendant had been ordered to remove the offending objects.
- The court upheld injunctive relief but narrowed the injunction to avoid restricting lawful, ordinary uses of the defendant’s property.
- The court declined to reach the merits of res judicata because the defense was not properly pleaded and preserved in the trial court.

## Legal Principles

- Private nuisance requires an unreasonable, intentional invasion of another’s interest in the private use and enjoyment of land, evaluated by weighing the gravity of harm against the utility of the conduct.
- Unreasonable aesthetic conditions, when substantial and contextually unreasonable, can support private nuisance liability.
- Compensatory damages for nuisance may be measured by diminished rental value, and reasonable costs incurred to mitigate or prevent continuing interference may be recoverable.
- Damages must be limited to periods when the nuisance existed and may not extend to times before the wrongful conduct began or after effective abatement was ordered.
- Injunctions in nuisance cases must be tailored to restrain wrongful interference without broadly deterring legitimate property uses.
- Res judicata is an affirmative defense that must be properly pleaded and preserved; failure to do so can forfeit appellate consideration.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed nuisance liability where a landowner used his property to impose retaliatory visual blight and disturbances that substantially and unreasonably interfered with neighbors’ use and enjoyment, while narrowing damages to the actionable period and tightening injunctive terms to prevent restraint of lawful property use.


Rattigan v. Wile, 445 Mass. 850, 841 N.E.2d 680 (Mass. 2006)