## Facts

- Mill owners in Plymouth, Massachusetts were subject to a final equity decree restraining them from ringing their mill bell before 6:30 a.m. because the early ringing was a private nuisance to neighboring landowners.
- After the decree, Massachusetts enacted St. 1883, c. 84, authorizing manufacturers to ring bells and use whistles or gongs at hours, and in a manner, designated in writing by local officials for the purpose of notifying employees.
- Plymouth’s selectmen issued the mill owners a written license allowing them to ring the mill bell beginning at 5:00 a.m. as they had done before the injunction.
- Compliance with the license would violate the existing injunction, so the mill owners filed a bill of review seeking dissolution or modification of the decree to permit licensed bell-ringing.
- The neighboring landowners demurred, arguing (among other grounds) that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to their previously protected interests.

## Issues

1. Whether St. 1883, c. 84, authorizing municipal licensing of bell-ringing by manufacturers at designated hours, was constitutional.
2. Whether a subsequent change in law and a license issued under it can support a bill of review to modify a prior final injunction grounded in common-law nuisance.
3. Whether the Legislature, acting under the police power, may qualify private nuisance-based rights previously enforced by injunction through a general regulatory scheme.

## Decision

- The court held St. 1883, c. 84 constitutional as a police regulation governing the use of bells and similar devices to notify employees.
- The court held the bill of review could be maintained because the statutory change and local license created a materially different legal context from that underlying the original decree.
- The court overruled the defendants’ demurrer, permitting further proceedings on modification or dissolution of the injunction.

## Legal Principles

- The Legislature may, under the police power, impose reasonable regulations on the use of property to address conflicts between private comfort and public or economic needs.
- Statutory regulation can alter the legal framework against which alleged nuisances are measured, including by authorizing conduct when performed within legislatively prescribed limits and local administrative controls.
- A bill of review may be available in equity when an intervening statute changes the governing law in a way that directly affects the continued propriety of an existing injunction.
- A final nuisance injunction does not necessarily freeze private expectations against later, valid exercises of general police regulation; equity may reconsider prospective relief in light of changed law.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a statute authorizing municipal licensing of mill bells as a valid police regulation and ruled that the intervening statutory scheme and resulting license permitted the mill owners to proceed by bill of review to seek modification of a prior injunction that had treated early bell-ringing as a private nuisance.


Sawyer v. Davis, 136 Mass. 239 (1884)