Air Pollution

From: Walter Block [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 11:09 PM
To:
Subject: RE: A tort case

Dear Dr Block, I am T from Hungary, a regular contributor to the Hungarian HVG’s (Heti Világgazdaság, World Economy Weekly) libertarian-leaning “Kapitalizmus” (Capitaism) blog (kapitalizmus.hvg.hu) primarily on ethics and political philosophy. I am planning to write a short blog post on pollution and evironmentalism from a natural law libertarian perspective. I would dare to ask a question to you.

Once in one of your lectures you have mentioned a tort case – if I remember correctly – from the 1830s in which a laundress was the injured party and an industrial plant was the tortfeasor. The laundress sued the plant because it’s smokestack sooted the drying clothes in the backyard of the laundress. The court ruled that the smoke from the plant is the property of the industrialist so it has nothing to do in the backyard of a laundress and obliged the factory to pay for the pollution. You have also mentioned that later the case was overruled by legislation that prevented it from becoming a precedent.

Could you please refresh my memory and tell me some details of both the case and the statute? Thank you very much indeed for your troubles. I am looking forward for your kind reply. Best wishes, T

Dear T: Look here:

Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring; reprinted in Block, Walter E. Ed. Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990, pp. 233-279; http://mises.org/story/2120; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf;
https://mises.org/library/law-property-rights-and-air-pollution-0 (This, in my opinion, is THE best essay ever written on environmentalism).

Horwitz, Morton J. 1977. The Transformation of American Law: 1780-1860, Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Best regards,

Walter

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2:21 pm on July 10, 2018