We had the occasional case of the same sort in England, until we got stupid and intrusive legislation like the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which is premised on the right that you shouldn't be allowed to offend anyone. One of the nicest old cases, with a similar suburban flavour, was Day v. Brownrigg (1878) 10 Ch.D. 29, all about the name on a house in what was then a leafy and bourgeois London dormitory.

Andrew

For those needing the refresher, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice told us yesterday that:

"There is no claim for pooping and scooping into the neighbour’s garbage can, and there is no claim for letting Rover water the neighbour’s hedge. Likewise, there is no claim for looking at the neighbour’s pretty house, parking a car legally but with malintent, engaging in faux photography on a public street, raising objections at a municipal hearing, walking on the sidewalk with dictaphone in hand, or just plain thinking badly of a person who lives nearby."

The court noted, in the same vein, that:

"As I explained to Plaintiffs’ counsel at the hearing, a court cannot order the Defendants to be nice to the Plaintiffs. Litigation must focus on legal wrongs and legal rights – commodities which are in remarkably short supply in this action. As my colleague Perell J. put it in High Parklane Consulting Inc. v  Royal Group Technologies Ltd., [2007] OJ No 107 (SCJ), at para 36, “[i]t is trite to say that making a living is a stressful activity and that much of life can be nasty and brutish. Tort law does not provide compensation for all stress-causing and nasty conduct that individuals may suffer at the hands of another…”"

See (for an entertaining read) Morland-Jones v Taerk, 2014 ONSC 3061 available at http://canlii.ca/t/g6wvd.

Stephen

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Professor Stephen G.A. Pitel
Goodmans LLP Faculty Fellow in Legal Ethics 2013-14
Faculty of Law, Western University
(519) 661-2111 ext 88433