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04 April 2025 / Tricia Hemans , Daniel Black
Issue: 8111 / Categories: Features , Property , Nuisance
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Child’s play?

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Tricia Hemans & Daniel Black consider common law nuisance & an interesting High Court decision on noise from a nursery
  • Dennis v Head Start offers the chance to consider how nuisance is operating post Fearn.
  • The district judge found that aggrieved persons had ‘exaggerated their responses to the noise to fit their case’. The expert evidence, paired with lay evidence, was ‘clearly’ enough to find there was no substantial interference.
  • Explores the second limb, which was hypothetical in this case: common and ordinary use of the land.

Picture the scene. It’s a sunny day in 2025 and certain news outlets have picked up a story about ongoing proceedings in the High Court. The claimants allege that the occupants of a new development are so loud and so obnoxious as to be a nuisance. It is reported that the claimants want an injunction. If not granted, they will seek damages.

So far, so familiar, supplemented with the striking novelty that it is reported to have been alleged that

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