I am often asked what a
person can do about excessive noise coming from a neighbour’s property.
The term ‘nuisance’ is
derived from the Latin word nocere which means ‘to harm’.
A person may sue
his neighbour for damages suffered as a result of excessive noise caused by the
neighbour. The person must show that that the noise has detrimentally affected
his quality of life, his health, comfort or well-being. An interdict is also
available in these instances and can be granted if the neighbour’s conduct is
unlawful or threatens to be unlawful. The factors that are normally considered
in determining whether the defendant’s conduct was unlawful include the type of
noise, the degree of its persistence, the locality involved and the times when
the noise is heard. No fixed standard is available to determine the
unlawfulness of the defendant’s conduct, the criterion being ‘not the
individual reaction of a delicate or highly sensitive person who truthfully
complains that he finds the noise to be intolerable is to be decisive, but the
reaction of the ‘reasonable man’, one who, according to ordinary standards of
comfort and convenience, and without any peculiar sensitivity to the particular
noise, would find it, if not quite intolerable, a serious impediment to the
ordinary and reasonable enjoyment of his property’.
In Prinsloo v Shaw 1938
AD 570 575 the court stated: ‘A resident in a town, and more particularly a
resident in a residential neighbourhood, is entitled to the ordinary comfort
and convenience of his home, and if owing to the actions of his neighbour he is
subjected to annoyance or inconvenience greater than that to which a normal
person must be expected to submit in contact with his fellow-men, then he has a
legal remedy’.
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