Kosich v. Poultrymen's Service Corp.

43 A.2d 15, 136 N.J. Eq. 571, 1945 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 55, 35 Backes 571
CourtNew Jersey Court of Chancery
DecidedJune 18, 1945
DocketDocket 149/460
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 43 A.2d 15 (Kosich v. Poultrymen's Service Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Jersey Court of Chancery primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kosich v. Poultrymen's Service Corp., 43 A.2d 15, 136 N.J. Eq. 571, 1945 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 55, 35 Backes 571 (N.J. Ct. App. 1945).

Opinion

Complainants filed their bill to enjoin the defendant, Poultrymen's Service Corporation, from operating its poultry food manufacturing and processing plant in such a manner as to produce and disseminate meal, dust, dirt, foul odors, noises and vibrations, which complainants charge have constituted and do constitute a private nuisance injurious to them personally and to their property.

The complainants, husband and wife, and the defendant corporation own immediately adjoining properties on Flint Boulevard, in South Toms River, Ocean County. On the complainants' land there is a large building containing five stores and fourteen apartments. Complainants make their home in one apartment; they rent the others. The stores are all presently used by the complainant Anthony Kosich; therein he conducts a new and used furniture and house furnishing business. To the rear of the store and apartment building is a one-story building divided into private garages.

Defendant's land runs through from Flint Boulevard to South Main Street. Upon it stands a four-story, sheet-metal enclosed mill, a mash-mixing building, a grain storage building, and a garage. When the main building was erected it was made to face Flint Boulevard, but it was not built out to the building line. Subsequently, two dust collecting sheds were added to the front of the mill and a large cone-shaped dust collector was installed above them near the roof; also, two similar dust collectors were installed outside of the mill near the roof on the side facing the property of the complainants.

The defendant has always taken its delivery of grain from freight cars placed on a siding across Flint Boulevard from its mill and the property of the complainants. Originally grain was shoveled from the cars into trucks, carried over the boulevard and dumped into hoppers leading into the mill. In July, 1927, the defendant installed a vacuum grain unloading device to do this work and, in the summer and fall of 1943, it substituted therefor another system. Grain is now drawn by the vacuum from the freight cars into a flexible metal hose, thence through a metal pipe under the highway *Page 574 and into the mill. The vacuum is created by a fifty horsepower electric motor operating an exhaust fan, and the air withdrawn from the pipe is released through a muffler into the outer air. Grain is carried from the pipe outlet into a tank containing a rapidly revolving cyclone cleaner; it then drops into a closed chute in which it is carried to a cleaning separator where any remaining dust is separated from the grain. This dust is drawn up through a pipe into one of the cyclone dust collectors on the outside of the mill where the heavier particles fall to the bottom and are carried into one of the dust sheds and the lighter dust is discharged into the outer air.

In addition to handling whole grain, defendant cracks corn and also grinds it into fine meal. The dust arising from such cracking and grinding, and from subsequent screening and grading, is forced by means of fans to one of the cyclone dust collectors installed on the outside of the building. There the heavier portions settle and are carried by an enclosed conveyor to storage bins; the lighter dust, in this instance, passes from the collector back into the mill and to a tubular dust collector, from whence it is carried to a storage bin.

Defendant also combines meat scraps, fish meal, bran and other ingredients in large mixers to form what is known as a dry mix. The ingredients are received in dry form in bags. Another appliance, known as a premixer, combines semi-solid buttermilk, fish oils and distillers' syrup into a wet mix. The wet mix and the dry mix are then combined to form what is known in the trade as a mash.

The bags in which defendant's products are sold are returned to the mill and are there cleaned by a motor-driven fan which sucks the dust from the bags. This dust also goes into a cyclone collector. The heavier portion of the dust is placed in bags; the lighter dust passes out of the top of the collector into the open air. The exhaust from the vacuum unloading system also contains dust. It is discharged through a twelve-inch pipe, equipped with a muffler, into one of the dust sheds. These sheds are fitted with wooden louvers and hung with burlap, and are designed to receive and retain all dust except such as may pass through the burlap into the open air. *Page 575

The conditions of which complainants were complaining at the time they filed their original bill of complaint in this cause may be thus classified:

(1) Dust, dirt, meal, chaff and other grain residue emanating from defendant's mill, falling upon complainants' land and buildings and carried into their stores and apartments;

(2) Noise and vibration resulting generally from the operation of defendant's machinery and appliances, particularly the noises at the freight cars on the siding incident to the operation of defendant's vacuum grain unloading device;

(3) Foul odors from fermenting or deteriorating meal and grain residue. By their amended bill complainants added an additional complaint:

(4) That foul odors were emitted from feed ingredients used and stored in defendant's mill and from fish oils and skim milk in and draining from metal drums stored upon land of the defendant immediately adjacent to complainants' building.

The principles of law applicable to the facts disclosed by the evidence are well established. Some particularly pertinent statements taken from the reports are:

"`To enjoin the prosecution of a perfectly legal business on account of the noise made in conducting it, the evidence should be clear and convincing.'" Part of the first syllabus in Hey v.Seifert Baime, Inc. (Court of Chancery), 95 N.J. Eq. 502;123 Atl. Rep. 106, quoted with approval by the Court of Errors and Appeals in Benton v. Kernan, 130 N.J. Eq. 193;21 Atl. Rep. 2d 755.

"If the legal right is not clear, or the injury is doubtful, eventual or contingent, equity will give no aid." Demarest v.Hardham (Court of Chancery), 34 N.J. Eq. 469.

"Any business, however lawful, which causes annoyances that materially interfere with the ordinary comfort, physically, of human existence, is a nuisance that should be restrained; and smoke, noise, and bad odors, even when not injurious to health, may render a dwelling so uncomfortable as to drive from it anyone not compelled by poverty to remain." Cleveland v. The CitizensGas Light Co. (Court of Chancery), 20 N.J. Eq. 201. *Page 576

"But when we come to deal with what is individual property, in which the owner has an exclusive right, the case is different. While my neighbor may stand by my fence on his own lot and breathe across it over my land, and may permit the smoke and smell of his kitchen to pass over it, and may talk, laugh and sing or cry, so that his conversation and hilarity or grief is heard in my yard, he has no right to shake my fence ever so little, or to throw sand, earth or water upon my land in ever so small a quantity. To do so is an invasion of property and a trespass, and to continue to do so constitutes a nuisance."Hennessy v. Carmony (Court of Chancery), 50 N.J. Eq. 616;25 Atl. Rep. 374.

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Bluebook (online)
43 A.2d 15, 136 N.J. Eq. 571, 1945 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 55, 35 Backes 571, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kosich-v-poultrymens-service-corp-njch-1945.