Huynh v. Blanchard and the Limits of Shutdown Injunctions in Texas Nuisance Law

I. Introduction

This commentary analyzes Justice Rebeca Huddle’s concurring opinion in the Supreme Court of Texas’s decision in Steve Huynh, et al. v. Blanchard, et al., No. 21‑0676 (Tex. June 7, 2024). The case arises from a dispute between commercial chicken growers (the “growers”) and their neighbors (the “neighbors”) over severe and recurring poultry odors emanating from a large-scale chicken-growing operation.

The neighbors sued for private nuisance and obtained a jury verdict that the growers negligently and intentionally caused a nuisance. Relying on that verdict, the trial court issued a permanent injunction that, in practical effect, shut down the growers’ entire chicken-growing operation. The Supreme Court of Texas ultimately concluded that this “shutdown injunction” was an abuse of discretion.

Justice Huddle concurred in the judgment, agreeing that an injunction was proper but that the particular shutdown order was far too broad. Her opinion focuses on two central themes:

• Clarifying that injunctive relief can be appropriate even when a nuisance is factually “temporary” and future damages are uncertain; and
• Re-emphasizing strict limits on the scope of injunctions—especially shutdown orders of lawful businesses—and insisting that Texas trial courts respect the Legislature’s regulatory choices, notably the Texas Clean Air Act and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) regulations governing poultry facility odors.

In that sense, the opinion does not radically change Texas law so much as crystallize and sharpen several existing doctrines: how jury findings constrain equitable remedies; when a permanent injunction may issue; and how courts must align nuisance injunctions with comprehensive regulatory schemes.

II. Summary of the Opinion

A. Propriety of an Injunction

Justice Huddle agrees with the Court that some form of injunctive relief was legally available to the neighbors. She joins the rejection of three arguments advanced by the growers for why no injunction should have issued at all:

1. Temporary nuisance vs. permanent injunction. The jury found the injury to be of a type that would recur only “occasional, irregular, intermittent, and not reasonably predictable”—a “temporary” nuisance. The growers argued that such a finding foreclosed any permanent injunction. Justice Huddle disagrees: an intermittent nuisance can be “permanent” in the sense that it will persist into the future even though its manifestations fluctuate, and nothing in Texas law makes the availability of injunctive relief turn on the “temporary” or “permanent” label.
2. Temporary nuisance vs. imminent harm. The growers contended that a temporary nuisance finding necessarily negated any legal finding of “imminent harm,” which is required for an injunction. Justice Huddle emphasizes that “imminent harm” is a legal question for the court, not a factual determination for the jury, and that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding imminent harm notwithstanding the jury’s classification.
3. Damages as an adequate remedy at law. The growers argued that the neighbors had a complete remedy at law in the form of money damages. Justice Huddle responds that the legal remedy is inadequate where the neighbors seek to prevent future intrusions whose timing and magnitude are uncertain; otherwise, the parties would be trapped in “perpetual litigation.” That multiplicity of suits, she explains, is exactly what makes the legal remedy inadequate and justifies equitable relief.

B. Error in the Shutdown Injunction

Where Justice Huddle departs most sharply from the majority’s analysis (though not its result) is in her assessment of the remedy actually issued: a permanent injunction that effectively shut down the entire chicken-growing operation from the outset.

In her view:

• The trial court’s order ignored the basic requirement of narrow tailoring in equity by enjoining lawful and unlawful conduct alike;
• The order amounted to a punitive measure against a lawful business rather than a corrective response calibrated to abate only the nuisance-level odors; and
• The court disregarded a detailed statutory and regulatory framework—including Texas Health & Safety Code § 382.068 and the TCEQ’s Strategic Odor Control Plan—designed precisely to mediate poultry-farm odor disputes.

She characterizes the injunction as “crack[ing] a nut with a sledgehammer” and insists that a total shutdown should be a last resort, used only after narrower, appropriately tailored measures have failed.

C. Directions on Remand

Justice Huddle concurs in reversing the injunctive order and remanding. On remand, she would direct the trial court to:

• Respect the jury’s factual findings, including the finding that the odor-generating injury was intermittent rather than constant;
• Craft a more limited injunction focused specifically on reducing odor emissions to a level tolerable to a person of ordinary sensibilities;
• Anchor that injunction in the Legislature’s framework for regulating poultry odors, particularly TCEQ’s enforcement regime and any existing Strategic Odor Control Plan; and
• Reserve a full shutdown only for a later stage, if a narrower injunction grounded in those regulatory benchmarks proves ineffective and is willfully violated.

III. Detailed Analysis

A. Factual and Procedural Context

From the concurrence we can reconstruct the essential posture, even though the full majority opinion and record are not reproduced:

• The growers operated a substantial chicken farm or farms under contract with Sanderson Farms, Inc., a major poultry producer.
• Neighbors living adjacent to or near these operations experienced intense, recurring odors—strong enough to interfere with the use and enjoyment of their properties.
• The neighbors complained to the TCEQ, which issued multiple Notices of Violation (NOVs) and, pursuant to Texas Health & Safety Code § 382.068, required a Strategic Odor Control Plan.
• The neighbors alleged that the growers failed to meaningfully implement that Plan and sued for private nuisance (negligent and intentional), seeking damages and injunctive relief.
• The jury found:
  • Each grower had negligently and intentionally caused a private nuisance as to each neighbor (Questions 1 and 3); and
  • The nuisance-related injury was of a type that would recur only “occasional, irregular, intermittent, and not reasonably predictable” (Question 4).
• The trial court, relying on this verdict, granted a permanent injunction that effectively shut down the growers’ chicken-growing operations.
• The growers appealed; the Supreme Court of Texas agreed that the injunction was an abuse of discretion and remanded for modification.

B. Precedents and Authorities Cited

Justice Huddle’s concurrence is heavily grounded in existing Texas nuisance and equity jurisprudence, as well as statutory and regulatory law.

1. Crosstex North Texas Pipeline, L.P. v. Gardiner, 505 S.W.3d 580 (Tex. 2016)

Crosstex is the Court’s leading modern nuisance case. It defines a private nuisance as:

“A condition that substantially interferes with the use and enjoyment of land by causing unreasonable discomfort or annoyance to persons of ordinary sensibilities attempting to use and enjoy it.”

Justice Huddle relies on Crosstex for several points:

• The centrality of “substantial” and “unreasonable” interference to nuisance doctrine;
• The role of the jury as the finder of underlying facts concerning the character and extent of the interference; and
• The proposition that courts may decide to abate a nuisance “whether it is temporary or permanent, and may choose not to abate either even if that is the only remedy requested” (quoting Schneider).

2. Schneider National Carriers, Inc. v. Bates, 147 S.W.3d 264 (Tex. 2004)

Schneider is central to the temporary/permanent nuisance dichotomy. It explains:

• A “temporary” nuisance is typically intermittent, occasional, and of uncertain duration; and
• The temporary/permanent classification should not determine whether a nuisance can be abated by injunction.

Justice Huddle quotes and extends this reasoning. She analogizes an intermittent nuisance to a chronic disease with episodic symptoms: the condition is permanent even though symptoms are not constant. Thus, an intermittent odor problem can support a permanent injunction since the underlying issue will foreseeably recur, even if unpredictably.

Schneider also contributes the policy insight that repeated litigation is not an acceptable “solution” to recurring nuisances:

While “’good fences make good neighbors,’ repeated litigation is unlikely to.”

Justice Huddle draws on this to reject the growers’ suggestion that the neighbors’ sole remedy should be to sue again each time odor levels spike.

3. Gilbert Wheeler, Inc. v. Enbridge Pipelines (E. Tex.), L.P., 449 S.W.3d 474 (Tex. 2014)

Gilbert Wheeler held that the ultimate classification of an injury to real property as “temporary” or “permanent” is a question of law for the court. But Justice Huddle emphasizes an important caveat from that decision: the court must still respect the jury’s findings on the underlying facts.

She quotes Gilbert Wheeler recognizing that “questions regarding the facts that underlie the temporary-versus-permanent distinction must be resolved by the jury upon proper request.” Thus, while the court labels the injury, it may not ignore factual determinations—such as the intermittent nature of the odors—that the jury has already resolved on sufficient evidence.

4. Pike v. Texas EMC Management, LLC, 610 S.W.3d 763 (Tex. 2020)

Pike provides the standard four-part test for a permanent injunction in Texas:

1. A wrongful act;
2. Imminent harm;
3. Irreparable injury; and
4. No adequate remedy at law.

Justice Huddle uses this framework to structure the analysis and to support the availability of injunctive relief here: the jury found a wrongful act (nuisance), the trial court concluded there was imminent harm and irreparable injury, and money damages were inadequate due to uncertainty and risk of multiplicity of suits.

5. Operation Rescue–National v. Planned Parenthood of Houston & Southeast Texas, Inc., 975 S.W.2d 546 (Tex. 1998)

Operation Rescue held that whether harm is “imminent” for injunctive purposes is a legal question for the court, not a factual question for the jury. Justice Huddle leans on this distinction to refute the growers’ argument that the jury’s “temporary” nuisance finding necessarily negated any finding of imminent harm.

She also cites the intermediate appellate opinion in Operation Rescue, which noted that a more sweeping injunction was justified only after a narrower order failed to prevent violations—illustrating her proposed “last resort” principle for shutdown orders.

6. Butnaru v. Ford Motor Co., 84 S.W.3d 198 (Tex. 2002)

Butnaru reiterates the basic equitable principle that injunctions are extraordinary remedies available only when there is no adequate remedy at law. Justice Huddle uses it to emphasize that injunctions are not a first resort and must be granted cautiously.

7. Holubec v. Brandenberger, 111 S.W.3d 32 (Tex. 2003), and related cases

Holubec stands for the proposition that injunctions must be “narrowly drawn and precise.” Subsequent cases like Wiese v. Heathlake Community Ass’n, 384 S.W.3d 395 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2012), reinforce that an injunction:

• Must be specific and clear in its terms; and
• Should be broad enough to prevent further violations but not so broad as to bar lawful activity.

Justice Huddle uses this line of authority to frame the core defect in the trial court’s order: instead of precisely targeting the offending conduct (excessive odors), the court prohibited a range of activity that is entirely lawful when done in compliance with regulatory standards.

8. TMRJ Holdings, Inc. v. Inhance Technologies, LLC, 540 S.W.3d 202 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2018)

TMRJ encapsulates the black-letter rule that “an injunction must be narrowly tailored to address the offending conduct—it must not be so broad that it would enjoin a defendant from acting within its lawful rights.”

Justice Huddle adopts this formulation to criticize the shutdown injunction, which by its nature swept in a significant amount of lawful business conduct alongside any nuisance-causing acts.

9. Fairfield Estates L.P. v. Griffin, 986 S.W.2d 719 (Tex. App.—Eastland 1999)

Fairfield Estates holds that an injunction which grants more relief than the plaintiff is entitled to—by barring a defendant from conducting lawful activities or exercising legal rights—is an abuse of discretion.

Justice Huddle invokes this as direct support for the conclusion that the trial court’s total shutdown order was legally improper.

10. Adequate Remedy at Law and Multiplicity of Suits: Campbell v. Wilder, 487 S.W.3d 146 (Tex. 2016) and Repka v. American National Insurance Co., 186 S.W.2d 977 (Tex. 1945)

These cases stand for the proposition that if reliance on damages will lead to a “multiplicity of suits,” then the remedy at law is not “complete and adequate.”

Justice Huddle employs this doctrine to explain why recurring, unpredictable odor invasions cannot realistically be remedied solely by after-the-fact damage awards.

11. Statutory and Regulatory Framework: Texas Clean Air Act and TCEQ

The concurrence devotes substantial attention to the regulatory framework established by:

• Texas Clean Air Act, Tex. Health & Safety Code §§ 382.001–.551;
• BCCA Appeal Group, Inc. v. City of Houston, 496 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2016), emphasizing TCEQ’s central role in air quality regulation; and
• Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.068, specifically addressing poultry facility odors and TCEQ’s response to complaints.

Section 382.068 establishes a multi-step enforcement process:

1. TCEQ investigates complaints about poultry odors and, if warranted, issues Notices of Violation (NOVs);
2. If three NOVs are issued within one year, TCEQ and the violator must enter a “comprehensive compliance agreement”; and
3. That agreement must include an “odor control plan” that TCEQ’s executive director deems sufficient to control odors.

In this case, that process produced a Strategic Odor Control Plan between the growers and TCEQ. Justice Huddle views that Plan as a critical benchmark: while she acknowledges allegations of poor implementation and lax enforcement, she underscores that the Plan itself is presumptively a workable standard for lawful operation, grounded in legislative policy choices and agency expertise.

C. The Court’s Legal Reasoning as Refined by the Concurrence

1. Permanent Injunctions Can Abate “Temporary” Nuisances

Justice Huddle agrees with the majority that the label “temporary” or “permanent” attached to a nuisance does not determine whether a permanent injunction can issue. She elaborates the doctrinal logic:

• A nuisance is “temporary” if its injurious effects recur intermittently and are not constantly present.
• Yet, if the underlying condition is expected to persist indefinitely and continue to generate intermittent harms, the situation still calls for a durable remedial response.

She analogizes this to a chronic disease with episodic flares: the diagnosis is permanent even though symptoms wax and wane. So here, odors can be intermittent (temporary from the jury’s vantage) while the underlying nuisance source is ongoing.

Doctrinally, this follows Schneider and Crosstex: the purpose of the temporary/permanent classification is primarily to guide the measure and timing of damages, not to fence off equitable authority. The key question for injunctions remains: is there a continuing or threatened interference that law cannot adequately remedy?

2. Imminent Harm is a Legal Question, Informed but Not Controlled by the Jury

The growers argued that a finding of “temporary” nuisance necessarily meant there was no “imminent harm,” defeating the second prong of the injunction test.

Relying on Operation Rescue, Justice Huddle draws a crucial procedural distinction:

• “Imminent harm” is a legal conclusion for the trial judge, based on the established facts;
• The jury’s role is to find the underlying facts, such as the extent, frequency, and nature of the odors.

Thus, even if the jury finds the injury intermittent and unpredictable, the court can still conclude that further invasions are sufficiently likely and serious to constitute “imminent” harm requiring equitable intervention.

3. Damages Are Not an Adequate Remedy at Law for Future, Intermittent Odor Intrusions

From the concurrence’s perspective, the core inadequacy of damages lies in:

• The unpredictable timing and severity of future odor episodes; and
• The practical impossibility of accurately calculating prospective damages ex ante.

Requiring the neighbors to bring a new lawsuit every time they experience excessive odors would be burdensome, inefficient, and contrary to the equitable principle that multiplicity of suits can itself justify injury prevention by injunction.

Accordingly, even though the jury’s findings describe a “temporary” pattern of injury, that very unpredictability strengthens the case for injunctive relief rather than defeats it.

4. Constraints on Shutdown Injunctions: Narrow Tailoring and Non-Punitive Function

The heart of Justice Huddle’s concurrence is a strong reaffirmation of limits on the scope and purpose of injunctions:

• Injunctions must be narrowly tailored. They should enjoin only the specific conduct causing the nuisance-level harms, not prohibit a business from engaging in all operations that might lawfully be conducted without causing such harms.
• Injunctions are corrective, not punitive. Courts are not to use injunctions as a sanction to punish perceived bad behavior (e.g., alleged misuse of subsidies or tardy regulatory compliance), but to prevent concrete, legally cognizable injuries.
• Shutdown is a last resort. A total shutdown of a lawful enterprise is almost never appropriate as an initial remedy. Instead, courts should first attempt more modest, targeted measures and escalate only if those fail, especially when a detailed regulatory framework already exists.

In the nuisance context, this means:

• Courts should aim to bring the nuisance “back down” to a level of annoyance that a person of ordinary sensibilities would not consider unreasonable.
• The objective is not elimination of all odors (some level of odor is inevitable in an “industrialized society”), but elimination of unreasonable and substantial interference.

5. Aligning Nuisance Injunctions with the Texas Clean Air Act and TCEQ Odor Regulations

Justice Huddle’s most significant institutional point is that courts must align nuisance remedies with the policy judgments embedded in the Texas Clean Air Act and TCEQ regulations.

Her reasoning proceeds in several steps:

1. Under federal law, states are responsible for regulating air quality; in Texas, that role is assigned by statute to TCEQ through the Texas Clean Air Act.
2. The Legislature and TCEQ have developed a detailed system for addressing poultry-farm odors, including complaint mechanisms, NOVs, and mandatory odor control plans after repeated violations.
3. This regime implicitly reflects a judgment about:
   • What level of odor is legally tolerable in the context of poultry operations; and
   • What operational controls (ventilation, flock size, cleaning schedules, etc.) are sufficient to bring facilities into compliance.
4. The Strategic Odor Control Plan in this case was designed by TCEQ to bring the operation into regulatory compliance. While there was testimony suggesting poor implementation or late submission, nothing in the record, as Justice Huddle reads it, demonstrates that the Plan itself was incapable of controlling odors if properly executed.
5. Therefore, when fashioning a permanent injunction, the trial court should:
   • Use the statutory and regulatory standards—embodied in § 382.068 and the Plan—as guideposts for distinguishing lawful from unlawful levels of odor; and
   • Structure its order so that the growers can continue to operate so long as they stay within those lawfully established bounds.

Put differently, an injunction that effectively nullifies or bypasses the regulatory scheme usurps the Legislature’s policy-making role. Courts “give effect to laws and regulations; we must not create our own.”

D. Interaction Between Jury Findings and Equitable Powers

A further theme in the concurrence is institutional: how should trial courts reconcile jury verdicts with equitable decisions on injunctive relief?

Justice Huddle emphasizes:

• The jury is “the fact finding body” and courts may not substitute their own factual conclusions where no party has successfully challenged the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the verdict.
• Equitable determinations (e.g., whether harm is imminent, whether an injunction should issue, and what its parameters should be) are for the judge—but those determinations must be built on the “building blocks” of the jury’s factual findings.

In this case:

• The jury’s finding that the nuisance-level odors are intermittent and not “repeatedly, continually, and regularly” present is a binding factual conclusion.
• The trial court was required to accept that factual premise and then design an equitable remedy that responds to a nuisance that is recurrent but episodic, rather than treat the situation as if the odors were constant and ever-present.

Justice Huddle is particularly wary of any suggestion that a court could simply disregard Question 4, treat the nuisance as “permanent” for all purposes, and then justify a shutdown injunction on that basis. Such an approach, she argues, improperly “usurps the jury’s fact-finding role.”

E. Evaluating the Role of Regulatory Compliance in Nuisance Remedies

The concurrence does not say that regulatory compliance immunizes a defendant from nuisance liability; the jury already found a nuisance despite the existence of TCEQ oversight and plans.

But regulatory standards and plans matter in at least three ways:

1. They mark the boundary of lawful vs. unlawful conduct. The Clean Air Act and TCEQ rules embody legislative judgments about what levels of emissions are acceptable from a given type of operation in a given setting.
2. They offer a technical blueprint for remedial measures. Odor control plans translate legal standards into operational steps (ventilation, litter management, timing of clean-outs, etc.), which courts can incorporate or adapt in crafting injunctions.
3. They establish a sequence of escalating responses. NOVs, compliance agreements, and plans represent a graduated enforcement system, which suggests that courts should likewise escalate remedies incrementally rather than leap immediately to total shutdown.

On remand, Justice Huddle would require the trial court to “grapple with the factors the TCEQ regulates—number of chickens, frequency of cycles, proper ventilation, maintenance of facilities, etc.—to ascertain the extent to which the growers can both grow chickens and comply with the law” and then frame its injunction accordingly.

IV. Impact and Implications

A. Nuisance and Land-Use Litigation in Texas

Huynh v. Blanchard, as illuminated by Justice Huddle’s concurrence, is likely to influence future nuisance cases in several respects:

• Expanded comfort with injunctive relief for intermittent harms. Courts may be more willing to issue permanent injunctions to address recurring yet unpredictable nuisances, such as odors, noise, or emissions, provided the underlying condition is enduring and damages would require repeated litigation.
• Greater emphasis on jury findings when tailoring remedies. Trial courts will need to explicitly align injunctive terms with the factual pattern found by the jury, particularly regarding the nature, frequency, and severity of the nuisance.
• Clearer separation between liability and remedy stages. Even if liability is firmly established, the form and scope of equitable relief remain subject to stringent constraints and must be justified independently.

B. Regulated Industries and Environmental Compliance

For heavily regulated industries—especially those governed by environmental and air-quality rules—the opinion underscores:

• Regulatory compliance plans (like TCEQ’s Strategic Odor Control Plans) have real legal significance as reference points for judicial remedies;
• Non-compliance and repeated NOVs can support findings of nuisance and justify equity, but courts are discouraged from ignoring the existing regulatory “scaffolding” when crafting relief; and
• Businesses may argue that a court-ordered shutdown that disregards the regulatory framework risks overstepping judicial authority and undermining legislative policy choices.

C. Trial-Court Practice: Stepwise, Not All-or-Nothing, Injunctive Relief

Perhaps the most concrete practice-oriented lesson is procedural: trial courts should adopt a stepwise approach to injunctions in nuisance cases:

1. First step: Craft a targeted injunction aimed at specific offending activities (for example, requiring adherence to a regulatory odor control plan, limiting flock size, or adjusting clean-out schedules).
2. Second step: Monitor compliance and effectiveness, using contempt powers and modification procedures as necessary.
3. Third step (only if needed): Consider more drastic measures—up to and including partial or total shutdown—only if the defendant persistently violates narrower orders or where evidence shows that no lesser measure can realistically abate the nuisance.

This incremental method better respects both the rights of property owners to use their land for lawful businesses and the rights of neighbors to be free from unreasonable interference.

V. Complex Concepts Simplified

1. Private Nuisance

A private nuisance is not a specific act, but a condition on someone’s land (noise, smell, pollution, etc.) that substantially and unreasonably interferes with a neighbor’s use and enjoyment of their property. The standard is that of a “person of ordinary sensibilities”—not the most sensitive neighbor, nor one unusually tolerant of discomfort.

2. Temporary vs. Permanent Nuisance

• Temporary nuisance: The harmful condition comes and goes or is of uncertain duration. Think of odors or noise that occur only during certain operations or seasons.
• Permanent nuisance: The condition is presumed to continue indefinitely and cannot be practically abated at reasonable cost.

In Texas, this classification mainly affects how damages are calculated (e.g., recurring lawsuits vs. one-time value loss), not whether a court may issue an injunction.

3. Permanent Injunction

A permanent injunction is a final court order requiring someone to do (or stop doing) something on an ongoing basis—e.g., “Defendant shall operate its poultry houses only in accordance with X Odor Control Plan, and shall not keep more than Y birds per house.”

To obtain one, a plaintiff must show a wrongful act, imminent harm, irreparable injury, and the absence of an adequate legal remedy.

4. Imminent Harm

“Imminent harm” does not mean the injury is occurring literally at the moment of judgment; it means the harm is reasonably likely to occur in the near future if not prevented. It is a legal conclusion based on all the evidence, not a factual question for the jury.

5. Adequate Remedy at Law

A “remedy at law” is usually money damages. It is “adequate” if paying money later fully compensates the wrong. It is inadequate if:

• The harm is hard to quantify (e.g., loss of peace and enjoyment, health concerns);
• Future harm is uncertain but serious; or
• The victim would have to sue repeatedly for the same recurring problem, leading to a “multiplicity of suits.”

6. Narrowly Tailored Injunction

A narrowly tailored injunction is precisely targeted: it prohibits only the specific activities that cause the legal violation and no more. It should:

• Be clear and specific about what is forbidden or required;
• Be no broader than necessary to stop the wrongful conduct; and
• Not bar lawful, non-harmful conduct.

7. TCEQ and the Texas Clean Air Act (including § 382.068)

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is the state agency responsible for enforcing air-quality standards under the Texas Clean Air Act. Section 382.068 specifically addresses poultry facility odor complaints and sets out a framework where:

• TCEQ investigates and issues NOVs;
• Three NOVs in a year trigger a mandatory comprehensive compliance agreement; and
• That agreement must contain an odor control plan that TCEQ believes will adequately control odors.

Courts are expected to consider this framework when designing remedies in odor-based nuisance cases involving poultry operations.

VI. Conclusion

Justice Huddle’s concurrence in Huynh v. Blanchard does not rewrite Texas nuisance law, but it powerfully restates and refines several core principles:

• A nuisance that is intermittent and unpredictable can still justify a permanent injunction when the underlying source is ongoing and damages are inadequate.
• “Imminent harm” and the decision to enjoin are questions of law for the court, made on the foundation of the jury’s factual findings.
• Injunctions must be narrowly drawn, corrective rather than punitive, and must avoid prohibiting lawful conduct; a full shutdown of a lawful business is a remedy of last, not first, resort.
• Where a comprehensive regulatory framework exists, particularly in environmental and air-quality fields, courts must craft remedies that respect and align with legislative policy and agency expertise.

On remand, the trial court in Huynh will be required to design an injunction that brings poultry-farm odors within legally acceptable limits without extinguishing the operation altogether, likely by using the TCEQ’s Strategic Odor Control Plan and related standards as a template.

In the broader legal landscape, this decision reinforces both the strength and the limits of equitable power in nuisance cases: courts can and should act to prevent serious, ongoing interferences with property rights, but must do so with precision, deference to jury fact-finding, and respect for the statutory and regulatory regimes that already govern the field.