Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Sure, here's an attempt.

Civil Code section 3493 allows a private person (as opposed to a governmental or "public" entity) to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit to abate a public nuisance.

A public nuisance is defined in Civil Code section 3480, which in turn references section 3479, defining "nuisance" in general. In law, "nuisance" has a somewhat different meaning than in general. It is defined as something that interferes with use of property, free passage in the streets, in injurious to health, offensive to morals, and so on -- in short, something that ought to be stopped in the interest of property rights or the right to conduct your life in peace. Reading the full text of 3479 and 3480 will be helpful in understanding the rather broad concept of a nuisance.

Okay, based on that, nuisances are divided into two categories for purposes of deciding (a) whether it is a nuisance at all, and (b) who has the right to sue. The two categories are "public nuisances" and "private nuisances." The difference is the number of people affected, or potentially affected. A public nuisance would be something like a whorehouse on Main Street, or a factory with a smokestack that smokes up the whole neighborhood. A private nuisance is, for example, a dog that barks loud enough to annoy the neighbor, or a porch light that is way too bright, or a home business that produces bad smells.

Ordinarily, prosecuting public nuisances is a responsibility of the district attorney or some other public official, who does it on behalf of the people in general, because the injury from the nuisance is deemed to affect the community as a whole. Private nuisances, on the other hand, affect one or a few persons or familiies, and the DA's office has limited to no interest in their elimination or abatement, so this is left up to the affected party or parties to handle via a private lawsuit for "private nuisance."

Civil Code section 3493 merely gives individual, private parties the right to sue to abate a public nuisance, even though this is ordinarily a function of a public official such as the district attorney, IF and only if the private citizen is especially injured by the public nuisance. For example, the Main Street whorehouse is a public nuisance, but if you are the owner of a day-care center across Main Street, you'd also have a right to sue to abate the public nuisance if the D.A. didn't.

Hope this is helpful. Reading CC 3479 and 3480 should be even more helpful.