Sullivan v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Co.

Citations

• 208 Pa. 540
• 57 A. 1065
• 1904 Pa. LEXIS 800

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Injunction—Treépass—Nuisance—Dust from iron furnace — Irreparable injury — Multiplicity of suits.</p> <p>If ail injury is continuous and remediable at law only by a multiplicity of suits, it can well be regarded as an irreparable one, calling for the interference of equity by the exercise of its restraining powers.</p> <p>A manufacturing concern located in a manufacturing district of a city cannot so operate its works as to actually destroy homes and other property in a residential locality in the same city.</p> <p>While a chancellor acts as of grace, such grace sometimes becomes a matter of right to the suitor in his court, and, when it is clear that the law cannot give protection and relief — to which the complainant in equity is admittedly entitled — the chancellor can no more withhold his grace than the law can deny protection and relief, if able to give them.</p> <p>The right of a man to use and enjoy his property is as supreme as his neighbor’s, and no artificial use of it b.y either can be permitted to destroy that of the other.</p> <p>On a bill in equity for an injunction it appeared that the defendant, a steel company, occupied in the city of Pittsburg land which its predecessor in title had purchased from one of the plaintiffs. On this land blast furnaces had been erected. The furnaces were at the foot of a bluff, on the top of which was a residential district, in which the properties of plaintiffs were situated. At the time the bill was filed the tops of the furnaces were a little lower and the stacks a little higher than the bluff. Prior to 1901 the district in which the plaintiffs’ properties were situated was subject to the smoke and dust from the furnaces and mills at the base of the bluff, but was not subject to ore dust in annoying and injurious quantities. Prior to the filing of the bill, the defendant rebuilt and greatly enlarged its furnaces, and began to use an ore known as “Mesaba ore” which was of a fine and dustlike quality. Prior