For some unknown algorithmic reason, a strange essay published in The Atlantic in 2022 kept popping up in my Twitter feed this weekend. This obscure essay, which is titled “Why do rich people love quiet?“, immediately brought back memories of my torts professor and mentor Guido Calabresi, who changed my intellectual life forever. Among other things, Guido — to this day, he prefers to be called by his Christian name — introduced me to the works of Ronald Coase and taught me a disturbing Coasean/Calabresian insight: most conflicts, including disputes about noise, are almost always “reciprocal” problems, i.e. both the “victim” and “wrongdoer” are often jointly responsible for whatever harm has befallen one of the parties. To this end, I can still remember one of the cases Guido assigned, Sturges v. Bridgman or what I now call “the case of the noisy confectioner”, and his unorthodox discussion of the reciprocal conflict between the silence-loving doctor and noise-making confectioner in that classic case. More generally, Guido asked us, what legal or moral rights should men of contemplation (like the doctor in Sturges v. Bridgman) have vis-a-vis “doers” or men of action (like the noisy confectioner)?
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I’m confused as to how, in the case of the noisy confectioner, the harm is “reciprocal” — the harm isn’t reciprocal unless and until the doctor wins the case and forces the confectioner to change his practices — in which case the harm flips, but until then, and after then, the harm is one-way. In any event, it seems to me that the “correct” answer is that it was up to the doctor to recognize the noise issue when the doctor moved in, as it was an existing condition and the confectioner had been operating legally. Any “loss in value or enjoyment” due to the noise should have been reflected in the rent and/or original purchase price of the doctor’s facility, so the doctor has no case.
Only if there was some kind of noise ordinance or zoning restriction should the doctor prevail, in my astute legal opinion. Reading the case notes, it seems that the judges did invent a kind of “zoning” reasoning to find in favor of the doctor.
Exactly right! The way Coase is taught by some torts professors is that the harm (too much noise; too little room) is “jointly caused” by both parties, but I see your point!
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