Bar noises produced in outdoor spaces

The condominium owner or the bar manager is also responsible for the noise produced outside the bar area, including the public spaces that they have been authorized to exploit. The owner of the bar commits the crime of disturbing the peace if he does not do everything to prevent - even with signs or guards - that people outside disturb the surrounding area. Even more so, it is forbidden to place loudspeakers outside the venue.

Bar noises exceeding normal tolerability fall under the crime of disturbing the peace. In particular, for this type of crime to occur, it is necessary that the noisy emissions have the ability to spread within the entire condominium building, thus causing potential disturbance to an indeterminate number of people, made up of resident condominiums and anyone else who may be in the area. that situation in the building, and not only to the occupants of the apartments located near the premises intended as a bar.

The obligation to supervise the spaces outside the venue must also fall on the municipal administration that owns the area. It is therefore understandable why if the bar that keeps open, without weekly rest, until the early hours of the morning, disturbs the condominiums of the block and those of the nearby buildings, the mayor is fully entitled to order, with a specific provision to protect public peace, the early evening closing time, partially compromising the profits of the restaurant manager (but if the municipality is inert, it is possible to appeal to the civil judge who can inhibit commercial activities and the use of public land to protect the right to health, i.e. an inviolable and absolute right).

How to protect yourself from bar noise

If the music in the bar is intolerable, you can call the police or the police. The noise, as mentioned, must be perceptible to an indeterminate number of people but this does not mean that the complaint or report is forwarded by a single person. The authorities, even in the presence of authorizations and licenses from the manager of the venue, must proceed to report the episode to the Public Prosecutor's Office.

In the resulting criminal trial, the injured party can become a civil party to obtain compensation for non-pecuniary damage, i.e. damage to health.

The court of Naples, with a sentence of 17 November 1990, said in this regard: «the alterations generated by noise on the human organism and particularly on its vegetative functions have now been ascertained by scholars and can be summarized as follows:

1) no system of vegetative life is devoid of reactions to noise of a certain intensity. As regards urban noise in particular, the safety limit is certainly lower than the usual safety limit for industries;

2) blood compensation values are altered with an increase in certain cells;

3) the digestive function presents significant alterations such as pyloric spasms, hyper or hyposecretion of gastrointestinal juices;

4) alteration of intestinal motility with bouts of diarrhea or stubborn constipation;

5) alterations of renal functions with hyper- or hyposecretion of urine;

6) alteration of blood sugar;

7) alteration of salivary secretion.

In addition to causing such significant damage, noise has a generic power to depress mental abilities with a decline in almost all intelligence functions and in particular attention, with consequent detriment to work activity. Noise also has a notable influence on reaction time, on learning, reducing its efficiency, and on the general fatigue of man."