Incomplete Property Rights: Tennis Court

Incomplete Property Rights: Tennis Courts

The process of playing tennis in the community is in general a relatively basic concept that in many conditions can represent an example of fundamentally incomplete property rights. Tennis courts, in the case of public courts for this example, are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Once the first set of players comes and begins playing on the first court, that court can no longer be used by another set of players, but this does not prevent other players from coming to play on other courts. This, of course, is true before congestion sets in, in which case the courts begin to be rivalrous. However, without some significant cost to the owner of the courts, there is no method that could prevent players
This deals with only the current players on those two courts. As they play, the players on court 1, who may be novices, continually hit their ball onto court 2. This prevents a Pareto optimal point from being achieved, due to the presence of this externality that the players on court 1 are causing. The incomplete property rights between the tennis courts are preventing the optimal point from being reached. There is no way of separating the two courts completely without a significant cost both in terms of money and
In this case, the judge ruled that because Forbes was applying due care to the emissions, that no injunction was granted to prevent their emissions. In relating this to the tennis example, court 2 in this situation would be Cooke, and court 1 would be Forbes. Court 2 has a problem with the balls that are coming over and “ruining” their game, and thus would take court 1 to court with regards to their disrupting the game on court 2. However, if this were to receive a ruling from the same judge, then as long as court 1 was being careful with their play to attempt to avoid hitting balls onto court 2, then they were free to