Balancing Hardships

The Balancing Hardships rule allows courts to deny an injunction and instead award damages in cases of encroachment or nuisance when the defendant did not act maliciously, the burden of removing the encroachment is significantly greater than the benefit to the plaintiff, and the public interest is not harmed. Essentially, it weighs the hardships on both parties to determine the most equitable outcome.

A homeowner builds a fence that slightly crosses into a neighbor's yard, believing it to be on their property. The neighbor, upon discovering this, seeks an injunction to remove the fence. However, the court finds that the cost and effort of removing the fence would cause significant hardship to the homeowner, while the neighbor's benefit is minimal, leading the court to award damages instead of granting the injunction.

Weigh the pain: if the cost of removal is too high, damages may prevail over injunctions.

Exams often present scenarios where students must identify the innocent nature of the defendant's actions, which can be misleading if they focus solely on the encroachment itself. Students might overlook the significance of balancing the hardships and the public interest.

Questions typically involve fact patterns where a defendant has innocently encroached or caused a nuisance, prompting students to analyze the relative hardships and determine whether an injunction or damages is appropriate.