The COVID Project
The record
- Jurisdiction
- Maine
- Level
- State
- Authority
- R.S. 1954, c. 141; common law of public nuisance codified
- Issued
- 2025-10-20 Oct. 20, 2025
- Effective
- standing; text in force throughout March 2020 to September 2021 (read as 2025-10-20)
- End
- standing
- In force
- Standing since Oct. 20, 2025 (a statutory duty; in force throughout the six quarters)
- Quarters
- 2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
- Limitation types
- Business closureStanding duty
- Addressees
- owners or persons in control of premises; businesses ('any building or place for the exercise of a trade, employment or manufacture')
- Character
- sanitary code duty
- Collection
- Standing duties: Maine DUT-ME
Operative words
The erection, continuance or use of any building or place for the exercise of a trade, employment or manufacture that, by noxious exhalations, offensive smells or other annoyances, becomes injurious and dangerous to the health, comfort or property of individuals or of the public... are nuisances within the limitations and exceptions mentioned.
Penalty
sec. 2706: 'Whoever erects, causes or continues a public or common nuisance, as herein described or at common law, where no other punishment is specially provided, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $100. The court with or without such fine may order such nuisance to be discontinued or abated, and issue a warrant therefor as provided.'; sec. 2705: injunction
What it required
Every person conducting a trade, employment or manufacture in a building or place to keep it from becoming 'injurious and dangerous to the health... of individuals or of the public,' on pain of a fine and a court order that the nuisance 'be discontinued or abated' with a warrant to enforce it (sec. 2706), abatement (sec. 2702) and injunction (sec. 2705).
Retrieval noteThe nuisance chapter is the common-law backstop to the health statutes: 22 M.R.S. sec. 454-A(2)(F) and (H)(3) (Ex. DUT-ME-009) direct local health officers to order the suppression of nuisances posing a public health threat and to enforce the private-nuisance removal statute, 22 M.R.S. sec. 1561 (Ex. DUT-ME-015). The file date in the name is the compilation date.