(delivering the judgment of the Court): This is an appeal from the decision of the High Court to grant an injunction against the appellant to prevent it from so using its land as to cause annoyance by noise to the neighbouring landowners. Specifically, the order restrains the appellant and its servants and agents from operating or permitting to operate (1) music bands with singers from open air stages and (2) the generator for the discotheque on its land until the trial of the action or until order. Behind the first limb of the order is clearly the electronic amplification of live music and songs.

Save in one respect, the open-air cinemas, this order is substantially what the respondents in their joint action have asked for. The judge made the order for an injunction in the full realisation of this.

The appellant holds a lease over nearly 81/2 acres of land which includes a lake. The conditions of use are stated in the lease to be:

"Syarat-syarat Nyata:

Tanah yang dikeluarkan milik ini hanya boleh digunakan untuk Komplek Pelancongan (Skating ring, restaurant, drive-in-cinema), dan tidak boleh digunakan untuk lain-lain tujuan melainkan dengan mendapat kebenaran daripada Pihak Berkuasa Negeri."

In English, it means that the land which has been given the title can only be used as a tourist complex (skating rink, restaurant, drive-in cinema), and cannot be used for other purposes except with the consent of the State Authority.

Despite the clear restriction of use to a skating rink, restaurant and a drive-in cinema and the express prohibition of any other use, the appellant built an open-air stage on the lake on which a music band and sometimes two music bands operated with live singers. It also floated a junk as a discotheque, which as we understand this modern term, is a place for the reproduction of recorded music. As we have observed earlier on, it is reasonably certain that amplifiers were used, the sounds were greatly magnified and carried over a greater distance than they would, unassisted, do, from the users' point of view, to attract customers, but alas, from the neighbours' point of view, to constitute an annoyance.

Noise in urban society there inevitably will be. Anyone living in town must expect to have to put up with a certain volume of noise from his neighbours and he, in turn, must have the right to make a certain amount of noise in the enjoyment of his property. But it is just as clear that no one has the right to create a volume of noise of such intensity and no one should be asked to put up with such a volume which by any reasonable standard becomes a nuisance.

As Lawton L.J. says in Kennaway v Thompson [1980] 3 WLR 361, 366 at page 366: "Now nearly all of us living in these islands have to put up with a certain amount of annoyance from our neighbours. Those living in towns may be irritated by their neighbours' noisy radios or incompetent playing of musical instruments and they in turn may be inconvenienced by the noise created by our guests slamming car doors and chattering after a late party. Even in the country the lowing of a sick cow or the early morning crowing of a farmyard cock may interfere With sleep and comfort. Intervention by injunction is only justified when the irritating noise causes inconvenience beyond what other occupiers in the neighbourhood can be expected to bear. The neighbour who is complaining must remember, too, that the other man can use his property in a reasonable way and there must be a measure of give and take, live and let live."

The appellant's first contention that as the registered and legal owner of the land, it can use its land in any manner it pleases it to use, no matter what the effect on the neighbours may be, is unsupportable by law or reason or good sense and must be rejected outright. Except to the deaf or hard of hearing or to those to whom noise has no appreciable significance or to those to whom the noise they deliberately create means the clicking