Ron-

As a practical matter, noise, or if you prefer perception of noise or even a fraudulent claim of noise annoyance covering some other motive, is a real problem for many of us. Not so much 'an easier identifiable law to enforce,' but rather easier for a complainant to invoke, by simply making a complaint sans any requirement for supporting evidence. If he complains that you drive recklessly past his house for example, he'll need to prove it to make the charge stick, as by having witnesses such as a cop catching you in the act. Not so with a noise complaint. If he says he is annoyed by noise you have created, that is incontrovertable. Imagine trying to convince a judge that he was not annoyed and is just lying about it. Contrary to the advertised principle of law, you are guilty until proven innocent in such a situation.

The general public is not your adversary when it comes to unfounded noise complaints. Assuming you in compliance with accepted standards for noise abatement, it is the unreasonable, overly sensitive social misfits that level complaints. What you have to prove in order to have such a complaint dismissed as being without merit is that complainant is an outlyer from the general public norm, unusually sensitive to noise. The pertinent laws do not attempt to satisfy everybody as regards freedom from noise annoyance. They are structured to accomodate most of the people most of the time. Noise annoyance is subjective and there are wide variances in the statistics of what levels are acceptable and not between individuals. There is no level low enough to be acceptable to all the people all the time.

Many communities have established objective levels on permitted noise emissions. These levels have been arrived at through a lot of field survey work by agencies charged with environmental quality, like HUD in the US, and promulgated by standards organizations like ANSI. They are not measures of noise annoyance per se, and cannot be due to the subjective nature of noise perception. What they are is objective measures that have been shown to correlate statistically with instances of noise complaints. They are normally set at values tolerable to the majority of the populace at some statistical level, say 80-90%. If a locality has such objective levels in the ordinances, getting the complaint dismissed is a matter of showing convincing evidence (e.g., sound survey data, operating logs) demonstrating that a) you understand what the law is, and b) are in compliance with it. That's what takes to show complainent is outside the population norms of reason and sensitivity and so get it dismissed. As you in LA Co there are no objective limits set by ordinance. That makes it a little more difficult, as you will also have to show what is the norm for acceptability in order to show complainant is an oddball. Is is doable - a good place to start looking is the nonoise.org web site mentioned earlier in this thread.

It takes some effort to build a defense against this threat before it is needed. Probably not so much as compared to the other efforts required to obtain the use of the site and keep it up, though.

Abel