"What nuisance?" And who came to it?

What sort of person moves next door to a chicken farm and then complains about the smell?

The sort of people who live in Inglewood in Taranaki perhaps, who come to the nuisance and then seek to make windfall profits from someone else's destruction. Story here.

I have no sympathy for people like Greg and Debbie Mitchell of Humphries Street Inglewood who move into a place knowing there's been a chicken farm just across the fence since 1966 and then complain about the smell. Neither does the common law -- at least, not in some jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, where the common law is unenumbered by statute law such as our own Resource Management Act, the principle of coming to the nuisance would apply.

Not here. According to the Regional Council Hearings Committee decision, the business of Inglewood chicken farmer Dallas Green must close within five years.

Whilst most if not all of the submittors have `moved to the nuisance', the fact is that this is no longer an appropriate location for this type of operation... The operation is now bounded on both sides by small lot residential development with no buffer areas of rural land. This is a classic `reverse sensitivity' situation.

If land prices do rise enough, then eventually it will become uneconomic to farm chickens there ayway, but this council have basically given this farmer five years to clear the decks and bugger off.

It's time to end the practice of zoning and of rule by town planners. It's time to put a stake through the heart of the RMA. And perhaps it's time to give back legal teeth to property rights, and to the doctrine of 'coming to the nuisance.'