[6] In his judgment Romer LJ concluded at p 184: I do not propose to attempt a more precise definition of a public nuisance than those which emerge from the textbooks and authorities to which I have referred.
It is not necessary, in my judgment, to prove that every member of the class has been injuriously affected; it is sufficient to show that a representative cross-section of the class has been so affected for an injunction to issue.Denning LJ agreed, at p. 191, that a public nuisance is a nuisance which is so widespread in its range or so indiscriminate in its effect that it would not be reasonable to expect one person to take proceedings on his own responsibility to put a stop to it, but that it should be taken on the responsibility of the community at large.In R v Madden (1975) 1 WLR 1379 the defendant telephoned a bomb hoax to a steel works whose business was disrupted for about an hour.
As a comparison, the cases of R v Ruffell (1991) 13 Cr App R (S) 204 and R v Shorrock (1994) QB 279 involved the prosecution of the organisers of "acid house" parties at night in fields adjacent to residential accommodation with liability confirmed because they knew, or ought to have known, that there was a real risk of creating the sort of nuisance that in fact occurred.
While R v Ong (2001) 1 Cr App R (S) 404 involved a betting scam in which the floodlights at a Premier Division football match between Charlton Athletic and Liverpool were to be sabotaged which was inherently dangerous to the thousands within the ground.
In R v Soul (1980) 70 Cr App R 295 a group who agreed to secure the unlawful release of a restricted Broadmoor patient was convicted of conspiracy to effect a public nuisance.
LR 234 suggesting that the courts were improperly reintroducing "public mischief" into the law despite the ruling by the House of Lords in R v Withers (1975) AC 842).
As to the requirement of common injury, Glidewell LJ said: Quite apart from anything else, this disrupts the whole operation of the police station to which these calls are directed, because a member of the public may wish to report an urgent matter such as a criminal offence, and cannot do so or is delayed in doing so because of this kind of behaviour on the part of the appellant.In R v Johnson (Anthony) (1997) 1 WLR 367, the Court of Appeal confronted the problem head-on.
The common law offence of public nuisance was abolished in England and Wales by s. 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
Thus, for example, s. 1 Protection from Harassment Act 1997 would now be used in cases involving multiple telephone calls, and s. 63 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 confers powers on the police to remove persons attending or preparing for a rave "at which amplified music is played during the night (with or without intermissions) and is such as, by reason of its loudness and duration and the time at which it is played, is likely to cause serious distress to the inhabitants of the locality".
The second argument raised by the defence was that the law lacked the certainty required to be valid under Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Lords therefore held that, as defined in Archbold, the offence did have sufficient certainty so that any legal practitioner asked to advise on whether proposed conduct was likely to be criminal would be able to give an accurate answer.
Some of this salt escaped from the envelope at a postal sorting office, which was closed as a precaution so that tests could be carried out to determine whether the material spilt was dangerous.