Court caseAIR 1978 All 86

The defendant installed a flour mill (atta chakki) driven by an electric motor in premises adjoining the plaintiff's house, in a locality of Dehradun used mainly for residence. The running of the mill produced noise and vibration that disturbed the plaintiff and his family in the enjoyment of their home and affected their health and comfort. The plaintiff sued for a permanent injunction restraining the defendant from running the mill. The defendant contended that the locality was not a quiet one and that running a flour mill was a lawful trade, so that the plaintiff had to put up with whatever noise it caused.

The Allahabad High Court held that the running of the flour mill amounted to a private nuisance and granted a permanent injunction. A substantial addition to the noise in a locality by the introduction of machinery, which seriously interferes with the ordinary physical comfort of the neighbours in their homes, is actionable even though the locality is already noisy to some degree; the question is not whether the place is quiet but whether the new noise materially adds to the discomfort and goes beyond what ordinary people living there can be expected to tolerate. Comfort was to be judged by the standard of ordinary, plain and sober people, and the interference here met that standard.