Eckels v. Weibley

Citations

• 232 Pa. 547
• 81 A. 645
• 7 A.L.R. 739
• 1911 Pa. LEXIS 760

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Injuctions—Nuisance—Threatened danger to health and life — Reasonable use of property — Stock yard — Residential district.</p> <p>1. While it is true that an injunction will not issue to allay mere fears and apprehension, nevertheless, if it be shown that there is reasonable and just ground to apprehend the establishment of a nuisance threatened by the defendant and which he has power to commit, and it is reasonably certain that the health and comfort of those complaining will be impaired by the threatened act, the writ will go out.</p> <p>2. An injunction restraining a threatened nuisance properly issues where the court finds as facts that the defendants were about to engage in the horse and cattle business in an exclusively residential section of a borough, but not yet compactly built up; that for the purpose of doing so they had erected on a lot owned by them a shed 140 feet in length and fourteen feet wide, and were about to build a barn in connection with it sixty feet long and forty feet wide; that the capacity of the proposed stock yard would be for from forty to fifty head of cattle and for from thirty to thirty-five head of horses; that the defendants proposed to deal in western cattle and horses, to be delivered to them by rail, and such delivery would necessitate a practically constant driving of both cattle and horses in and out of the yard and over the public streets of the borough; that they proposed to occasionally hold public sales of cattle and horses on their premises and to exhibit and sell them on the street, on which their yard fronted; that the operation of the yard as proposed by the defendants would result in the breeding of great quantities of flies, would engender noxious odors and occasion disturbance and noise, would render the enjoyment of the plaintiffs’ property uncomfortable and be detrimental to their health; that the use of their property by the defendants for the large business which they proposed to carry on in the sal