easily exceed in amount the damage which will be caused to the person injured by its being suffered to remain. Upon the whole, therefore, it cannot be expected that a court of equity will ever make a decree that a costly building, which has been completed, be pulled down; and, if such a decree shall ever be made, there is little likelihood that it will be executed.
There is, however, an obstacle in the way of obtaining a remedy at law for a permanent nuisance, which has not yet been adverted to. Such a nuisance is a continuing tort, i. e., it is a new tort every moment; and the only damages that can be recovered for such a tort are such as have been already suffered; and hence the person injured, if he would obtain full indemnity, must sue periodically so long as the tort continues. Moreover, if he lets too long a time elapse without suing, the tort-feasor may acquire a prescriptive right to continue what was at first a tort. If, therefore, a permanent nuisance has been erected, and it cannot be abated, justice would seem to require that the person injured by it should at least recover at once, and by a single action, a full compensation in money for the injury, and this measure of justice equity may, it seems, grant; for, though equity cannot itself assess damages, yet it may have the full amount of the damages which will be caused by the nuisance assessed by means of a feigned issue, and it may then make a decree that the defendant pay the damages so assessed; and if the defendant, having paid these damages, shall be afterwards sued at law, he may obtain an injunction against the prosecution of the action.
It is well known that every tort as such dies with the person committing it; and therefore no action at law founded strictly upon a tort ever lies against an executor or administrator as such, or against an heir as such. If, however, the deceased tort-feasor has been enriched by his tort, and his ill-gotten gains have gone to his representatives, justice clearly requires that the latter should restore them to the person injured; and accordingly they may be recovered by an action at law, if there be an action, not founded upon the tort, which is adapted to the circumstances of the case. Thus, if a tort-feasor have converted the fruits of his tort into money, an action for money had and received will lie against his executor or administrator. So if the tort consisted in wrongfully taking or detaining property, and the property so wrongfully taken or detained has gone to the executor or administrator, or to the
