From Tort Law: Cases and Materials 6-7 (E. Weinrib ed.

, second edition 2002) In The Mayor, etc. of Bradford v. Pickles, [1895] AC 587 (HL), the plaintiffs owned some land beneath which were large water springs that they used, for over 40 years, to supply the town of Bradford with water. The plaintiffs land was the lower part of a hillside, and above it was a tract of land owned by the defendant. Beneath the defendants tract there was a natural reservoir for subterranean water and normally this water flowed, but not in a defined stream, underground down to the plaintiffs land and filled their springs. The defendant decided to sink a shaft in his own land to change the flow of the underground water. This reduced the amount of water that flowed down to the plaintiffs springs. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants sole motive was to injure the plaintiffs and force them to buy the defendants land or pay him for the water they required. The plaintiffs sought an injunction to stop the defendant from continuing his work. The House of Lords refused to grant an injunction. After referring to an earlier case that held that an owner of land had a right to sink a well upon his own premises and thereby abstract the subterranean water percolating through his own soil, which would otherwise by force of gravity have found its way into the plaintiff s spring, Lord Halsbury LC observed:
If it was a lawful act, however ill the motive might be, he had a right to do it. If it was an unlawful act, however good his motive might be, he would have no right to do it. But I am not prepared to accept Lindley LJs view of the moral obliquity of the person insisting on his right when that right is challenged . I see no reason why he should not insist on their purchasing his interest .

Contrast Bradford v. Pickles with Hollywood Silver Fox Farm Ltd. v. Emmett, [1936] 2 KB 408 (CA), where the plaintiff company carried on the business of breeding silver foxes on its land. During the breeding season, the vixens are very nervous and liable, if disturbed, to refuse to breed, to miscarry, or to kill their young. The defendant was an adjoining landowner who, as a result of a dispute with the plaintiff, made his son discharge guns on his own land as near as possible to the breeding pens for the sole purpose of injuring the plaintiffs business by interfering with the foxes breeding. The plaintiffs sought an injunction to restrain the defendants acts. The defendant, relying on the Bradford case, argued that (1) the plaintiffs business required an extraordinary degree of quiet and that therefore they could not prevent the defendant from using his land in a way that would not be a nuisance apart from the special use to which the plaintiff put its land, and (2) the defendant had a right as proprietor to shoot on his own land and that his intentions were irrelevant in that they could not make a lawful act unlawful. The court granted the injunction and held that in an action for nuisance by noise, the motive of the noise-maker must be considered in determining whether or not he was using his property in a legitimate and reasonable manner. The court cited the following sentences from a previous case: No proprietor has an absolute right to create noises upon his own land, because any right which the law gives him is qualified by the condition that it must not be exercised to the nuisance of his neighbours or of the public. If he violates that condition he commits a legal wrong, and if he does so intentionally he is guilty of a malicious wrong in its strict legal sense. The court then concluded that the decision of the House of Lords in Bradford Corporation v. Pickles has no bearing in cases such as this.