The Town of Lyme owned land with frontage on a pond as well as on a brook into which the pond drained. The Town’s land was used as a recreation area, including a beach, sports fields and tennis courts. The plaintiffs in this case owned properties adjacent to the pond but located on the other side of the brook. The area around the brook on both sides was largely wetlands. Over the course of several years, the Town lowered the water level in the pond by modifying beaver dams to increase the size of the town beach and improve the condition of the playing fields. These actions also affected the plaintiffs’ property, converting a large area of submerged wetlands into mud and draining the water away from the shallow shoreline adjoining their properties. The plaintiffs sued the Town, alleging among other things that the Town’s actions created a private nuisance on their properties and that the Town had “taken” their properties without just compensation.
“A private nuisance exists when an activity substantially and unreasonably interferes with the use and enjoyment of another’s property.” The activity must cause harm that “exceeds the customary interferences a land user suffers in an organized society, and be an appreciable and tangible interference with a property interest.” However, the Court found that the plaintiffs did not allege facts serious enough to constitute a substantial and unreasonable interference with their property. “Merely converting certain submerged wetlands to mud, and lowering the water level of the pond, thereby allegedly compromising, in an undefined way,” an abutter’s access to the water, was not enough. The plaintiffs did not allege that the area was no longer wetlands, only that the water level had changed. “Mere annoyance or inconvenience will not support an action for a nuisance.” In addition, the Court was not persuaded by arguments that the Town’s actions decreased the value of the plaintiffs’ properties, saying that depreciation in land values “is ordinarily accorded little weight by the courts in nuisance cases [because] the law cannot generally protect landowners from fluctuating land values which is a risk necessarily inherent in all land ownership.”
Similarly, the Court found that the Town’s actions did not constitute an unconstitutional “taking” of the plaintiffs’ property for which they should be paid. In this case, the claim was looked at as one of “inverse condemnation,” where the government takes property “in fact” but does not formally exercise its eminent domain authority. To rise to the level of inverse condemnation, the government must substantially interfere with, or deprive a person of, the use of his property in whole or in part. This interference must be sufficiently direct, peculiar, and of a significant magnitude so that fairness and justice require compensation to the landowner. However, once again, the Court noted that the specific interference alleged here simply wasn’t significant enough, and upheld the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims.