Yesterday, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision and directed a lower court to tell the Old Opera House on Bourbon Street to turn it down. It ruled in favor of plaintiffs Peterson Yokum and Polly Elizabeth Anderson – who reside at 723 Toulouse St. – against Nicholas Karno and the Old Opera House, located around the corner at 601 Bourbon St.

The court’s findings spell out the plaintiffs complaints about noise at the Old Opera House, which a decibel reader measured at more than 10 dBs above ambient noise, but it found in favor of the plaintiffs because “The case at bar presents facts and issues that are indistinguishable, save a few different parties and dates, from this court’s previous ruling in Yokum v. 615 Bourbon Street L.L.C.,” which granted the plaintiffs an injunction.

Since the current noise ordinance is in effect for this ruling, it has limited applicability for the future. The city’s noise guidelines are being revised, and this case illustrates why. The standards currently used to determine what is too noisy are problematic, starting with dBs over ambient noise. Since the noise of the club helps create the ambient noise, noise could be unreasonable but legal because it doesn’t cross the 10-over-ambient threshold. Clubs are forbidden to “Play live or recorded music which is so unreasonably intrusive or offensive as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of a property of a person residing within 200 feet of the premises,” but there are a host of impossibly vague terms in there – “unreasonable,” “intrusive,” “offensive,” “comfortable” and “enjoyment” – a point raised by Karno that this court didn’t address. Yokum equally vaguely stated that the noise “caused significant discomfort and annoyance, inconvenience, mental distress, pain and suffering, inability to sleep, entertain, and take solace in the privacy of [his] home.”

I remain surprised that anyone has any expectation of quiet near Bourbon Street, but it’s obviously not in anyone’s best interest to have Bourbon Street noise be completely unchecked. That potentially leads to mayhem and noise that’s not only problematic for residents for other musicians and other businesses. The task of figuring out how to define the limits of allowable noise is a difficult one, but it’s also an incredibly important one as that ordinance is going to have a lot to say about the nature of the French Quarter and music’s place in it.