Neighbor Nuisance: What is Your Recourse?

What is a Nuisance?

Minnesota Statute Section 561.01 defines a nuisance as:

Anything which is injurious to health, or indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, is a nuisance.

But what does this mean in practice? In Minnesota, private nuisance is measured against the statutory standard in Section 561.01. Minn. Stat. § 561.01.

Nuisances can be public or private, and the difference matters because it controls who may sue and how the condition is enforced. A public nuisance is a condition that unreasonably annoys, injures, or endangers the safety, health, morals, comfort, or repose of a considerable number of members of the public, or that obstructs a public highway, right-of-way, or waters used by the public. Minn. Stat. § 609.74. A private nuisance affects an individual’s use and enjoyment of property, and the affected person may sue to enjoin or abate it and recover damages. Minn. Stat. § 561.01.

Some everyday examples could be failing to cut your grass, excessive noise, and accumulation of garbage or other junk. It is worth understanding, though, that Minnesota’s general public-nuisance offense does not depend on a fixed list of activities, although Minnesota law does also declare certain specific acts or omissions to be public nuisances. Minn. Stat. § 609.74.

For public nuisances, chapter 617 provides one civil abatement framework for certain building-based nuisance activities, which is triggered by specified criminal conduct within a building (such as prostitution, controlled-substance, gambling, and unlawful weapons or alcohol violations). Under that framework, a public nuisance exists upon proof of one or more separate behavioral incidents for the most serious categories, or two or more separate behavioral incidents committed within the building within the previous 12 months for others. Minn. Stat. § 617.81.

Several conditions can be private nuisances when they mainly affect a single neighbor’s use and enjoyment of adjacent property, even though the same conditions can be public nuisances when they affect the community at large. For example, Minnesota courts have treated the diversion of surface water onto adjacent land as an actionable nuisance affecting a neighbor’s property. Highview North Apartments v. County of Ramsey, 323 N.W.2d 65 (Minn. 1982).

Whether a particular condition qualifies as a public nuisance turns on the general statutory standard (whether it unreasonably annoys, injures, or endangers a considerable number of members of the public), as well as on any other act or omission that Minnesota law separately declares to be a public nuisance. The practical question is always whether the condition meets the public-nuisance standard in Section 609.74 or the private-nuisance standard in Section 561.01. Minn. Stat. § 609.74.

Who Can Enforce a Nuisance?

Because a public nuisance affects the community at large rather than a single individual, the authority to bring a court action to abate it under the chapter 617 framework rests with a public prosecuting official. It is not accurate to call this simply “city action.” Under Minnesota’s chapter 617 abatement framework, a prosecuting attorney is the official who seeks abatement of the nuisance. Minn. Stat. § 617.82. Minnesota law defines a “prosecuting attorney” as “the attorney general, county attorney, city attorney, or attorney serving the jurisdiction where the nuisance is located.” Minn. Stat. § 617.80, subd. 9. A county attorney and the state attorney general have the same authority a city attorney does. A public nuisance may also be enforced criminally as a misdemeanor. Minn. Stat. § 609.74.

A private nuisance action may be brought by any person whose property is injuriously affected or whose personal enjoyment is lessened by the nuisance. Minn. Stat. § 561.01. There are limited circumstances, however, when a city can assume a duty to act for the protection of others, including, by extension, a duty to abate a dangerous condition. No bright-line rule governs; the Minnesota Supreme Court identified at least four factors, which it described as not exhaustive, to consider in deciding whether a municipality has assumed such a special duty:

• The city had actual knowledge of the dangerous condition;
• There was reasonable reliance by persons on the city’s representations and conduct, based on specific actions or representations that caused the person harmed to forgo other means of protection;
• An ordinance or statute set forth mandatory acts clearly for the protection of a particular class of persons rather than the public as a whole; and
• Whether the city used due care to avoid increasing the risk of harm.

The mere enactment of a general ordinance does not, by itself, create this special duty. Cracraft v. City of St. Louis Park, 279 N.W.2d 801, 806-07 (Minn. 1979). The Minnesota Supreme Court reaffirmed and applied this four-factor test in Radke v. County of Freeborn, 694 N.W.2d 788 (Minn. 2005), confirming that the framework remains current Minnesota law.

There are ways to decrease “nuisance neighbors” under the laws of Minnesota.