ABSTRACT
Prescription may take place at common law or under the Prescription Act 1832. Negative property rights are often treated as anomalous. The notion of a negative property right is not without its conceptual, theoretical or practical difficulties. These difficulties are highlighted in particular when one considers the ability of one landowner to acquire a prescriptive right to commit a nuisance against another. Freedom of use of property by a landowner is a tenet which has developed through the common law. The proposition that there could be acquired a prescriptive right to commit a nuisance was a proposition which clearly prevailed in the nineteenth century. The prescriptive right of a neighbour to commit a nuisance, say to emit noise at ten decibels for four hours a day, would not preclude the owner from developing his land in the same way as, for example, if the neighbour had a legal right of way over the land.
