Understanding Public Nuisance
Professor Jason Neyers has been doing extensive research in tort law in the area of public nuisance. The traditional understanding of public nuisance is that it is catch all tort, modelled on section 80 of the Criminal Code of Canada that protects the public from interferences with its safety, health, property or comfort. Neyers’ project reconceptualizes public nuisance as a more manageable, distinctive and focused tort that exists to protect everyone’s exercise of his or her public rights (such as the right to travel without undue hindrance on public roads or the right to fish in navigable waters).
This research has been funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Foundation for Legal Research and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. Neyers has presented versions of these ideas at conferences and workshops around the world, including the Obligations Discussion Group at Oxford, the Moral Values and Private Law conference at King’s College London, the Private Law Theory Workshop at Queen’s, the eighth International Remedies Forum in Prato, Italy, and the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference in Edinburgh.
