In English criminal law, public nuisance is a act, condition or thing that is illegal because it interferes with the rights of the general public.
In Australia
In Kent v Johnson the Supreme Court of the ACT held that public nuisance is "an unlawful act or omission ... which endangers the lives, safety, health, property or comfort of the public or by which the public are obstructed in the exercise or enjoyment of any right common to all". And also, public nuisance is a criminal offense at some common law and by statute under some states. To establish a prima facie case of public nuisance, a private individual will have to prove: (1) title to sue, (2) that the interference is with a public right and (3) that the defendant's interference is substantial and unreasonable. (1): title to sue
In the case Walsh v Ervin, as the general principle is usually stated, an individual cannot sue alone for relief in respect of a nuisance to a public highway unless he has sustained some particular damage, in the sense of some substantial injury, direct and not merely consequential, beyond that suffered by the public generally. (2): interference is with a public right
In the case Attorney-General v PYA Quarries Ltd, a nuisance which is so widespread in its range or so indiscriminate in its effect that it would not be reasonable to expect one person to take proceedings on his own responsibility to put a stop to it, but that it should be taken on the responsibility of the community at large (3): interference is substantial and unreasonable
The interference must be substantial and unreasonable in order to establish public nuisance. In modern world, daily inconveniences and annoyances are part of unreasonable and substantial interference. However, there are some examples that shows even if it could cause interference to the public, there is no public nuisance. For example, in Maitland v Raisbeck, "it would seem that every driver of a vehicle on the road would be turned into an insurer in respect of latent defects in this machines", even if a danger was created because of moral use of vehicle. In the case Silservice Pty Ltd v Supreme Bready Pty Ltd, Roper Chief Judge in Equity stated that:
it appears that in cases of this kind if the defendant has available to him reasonable means of removing or avoiding the obstruction, he is responsible for the nuisance if he does not adopt those means. The test is not whether an obstruction has been caused, but whether the obstruction could reasonably have been avoided. I think, however, that this is not the sole test of whether a person is responsible for the nuisance caused by the assembly of a crowd of people, and that a more absolute liability rests upon the person whose business involves the gathering together of a crowd, or who, apart from any consideration of the bona fide conduct of his business, deliberately continues to gather the crowd. (citations omitted).
Discussion
The nuisance action began in twelfth century England as a criminal writ, belonging only to the Crown. It was used in cases that involved encroachments upon the King's land or the blocking of public roads or waterways. The King sought to punish these criminal infringements, commonly known as "purprestures", through criminal proceedings. Over time, activities prosecuted as public nuisances included everything from embezzling public funds to having a tiger pen next to a highway, from assisting a homicidal maniac to escape to placing a mutilated corpse on a doorstep, and from selling rotten meat to "subdividing houses to the point where they become 'overpestered' with the poor". As these examples demonstrate, early authority to commence public nuisance actions was derived from the sovereign's "police power".
Spencer (1989 at 59) describes the offence as "a rag-bag of odds and ends which we should nowadays call 'public welfare offences. But the common feature of the crime is that members of the public suffer a common injury through interference with rights which they enjoy as citizens. The modern definition is found in paras 31–40 Archbold (2005):
In Attorney General v PYA Quarries Ltd the issue was whether quarrying activities—which showered the neighbourhood with stones and splinters, and caused dust and vibrations—were a private nuisance affecting some of the residents (which would have been civil), but not a public nuisance affecting all Her Majesty's liege subjects living in the area. In his judgment Romer LJ concluded at p 184:
Denning LJ. agreed, at p. 191,