At the time of Weeks' treatise, there was no legal protection for emotional distress unconnected to a physical injury.
Holmes also cited the example of an easement for light and air—if a neighbor built up a tall structure that overshadowed your house, you would have no legal remedy.
[2] Weeks and Holmes also identified that there could be damage without legal remedy based on some doctrines that limited liability.
Riparian owners, for example, could suffer damage from their neighbors upstream use of the water, but as long as the use was considered reasonable there would be no legal remedy.
330, the judgment of Lord Cairns and Lord Cranworth stated:[4] Where the owner of land, without wilfulness or negligence, uses his land in the ordinary manner of its use, though mischief should thereby be occasioned to his neighbour, he will not be liable in damages.In the 1938 decision in Alabama Power Co. v. Ickes (302 U.S. 464), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled: The term 'direct injury' is there used in its legal sense, as meaning a wrong which directly results in the violation of a legal right.