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Comment by cjrp | Hacker News Reader

In the UK there is a case[1] (based around cricket, of course) which set the precedent that even if you "come to the nuisance", you can still force people to stop.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v_Jackson

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Interesting, thanks for sharing!

But actually that wiki page says the judgement regarding "coming to the nuisance" was based on precedent set by a different case almost 100 years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturges_v_Bridgman

A famous U.S. case often cited in the context of Law & Economics involves a residential development built near a pre-existing feedlot. Like in the UK case the court found an exception to the general rule that a court won't grant injunctive relief to those coming to the nuisance, and it ordered the feedlot to shutdown. However, the court made the developer pay damages to the feedlot to cover their losses--loss of business, relocation costs, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spur_Industries,_Inc._v._Del_E....

That's Coase's Theorem in action: any inconvenience can be compensated, so it's fine to mandate the globally economically optimal decision and use transfer payments to make them locally fair.

Sort of? AFAIU, according to the Coase theorem the courts should never have needed to be involved. Indeed, the rule prohibiting relief for those coming to the nuisance is designed to prevent people from using the courts as an end run around bargaining with the nuisance owner. The characterization of the judgment as achieving global optimality using transfer payments brings to mind Kaldor–Hicks.

Here's an interesting paper that discusses the case's relationship to the Coase theorem: Coming to the Nuisance: An Economic Analysis from an Incomplete Contracts Perspective, https://www.dartmouth.edu/~csnyder/491.pdf

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