The courts generally do not favor private nuisance actions for air pollution; the dire prospect of shutting down a polluting industry usually prevails over individual plaintiffs' comparatively insubstantial environmental rights. Often, however, the court's task of balancing the partics' relative equities is eased by defendant's transigence, e.g., where it neither seeks to alleviate the complainants' suffering nor to perform functions that are particularly vital to the economic health of society.

The usual pattern was turned on its head in a recent case in which the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was asked to affirm the closing as a nuisance of a noisy, dusty, vibration-causing automobile shredding and recycling plant in Indianapolis. Automobile shredders are enormous machines which tear junked cars into fist-sized hunks of metal, glass and cloth, which can be sold as scrap and conveniently recycled. Thus, auto shredders help to lessen the waste of materials perpetrated by the automobile's planned obsolescence. Moreover, this particular auto shredding firm had clearly tried to mitigate the damage which it caused to its neighbors.