Did you ever think that it was unfair that, especially in gentrifying neighbourhoods, people could move in and then start insisting that noisy pubs, which had existed for years, or shops of an adult nature should move, even if they have been there first.
You can thank Dr Octavius Sturges of 85 Wimpole, London, for this. In 1879 he sued his neighbour, a baker named Bridgman.
As part of his business activity, for more than 20 years, the confectioner used two large mortar and pestles. The noise and vibration hadn’t seemed to the physician to be a nuisance until he built a consulting room at the end of his garden, against the wall of the confectioner’s kitchen, in which the mortars and pestles operated. Dr Sturges sought an injunction to stop the noise and won. The court decided that the confectioner, Bridgman, could not claim that long usage of the equipment had established a right to make such a noise.
It’s still the controlling precedent, 130 years later.