Haley v. xAI: 10,000 Southaven Neighbors Sue Over the Roar of 57 Gas Turbines

xAI's Colossus 2 campus sits in Southaven, just across the Tennessee line from Memphis, and the company has powered it in large part with on-site methane gas turbines rather than waiting for grid capacity. The turbines are operated through a subsidiary, MZX Tech, and the complaint also names SpaceX, which reporting ties to the ownership structure of the site.

The plaintiffs, led by a resident named Haley, describe a soundscape that never stops: roaring, rumbling, humming, whining, and low-frequency vibrations that can be heard and felt in homes near the site day and night. According to the complaint, the turbines began operating in or around August 2025 with three units and grew to 57 in less than a year. MZX holds a permit for 41 permanent turbines. Residents say their own readings at their property lines exceed 70 dBA, a level the complaint says violates Southaven's noise ordinance.

The legal theories track the pattern the plaintiffs' bar has used in every 2026 data center noise case: private nuisance, public nuisance, and negligence. Two additions make this complaint sharper. Negligence per se treats the alleged ordinance violation itself as proof of unreasonable conduct, and negligent infliction of emotional distress puts the sleep loss and anxiety residents describe directly in front of the jury. The relief sought is compensation for the nuisance harms and for diminished property values.

The same turbines are already the subject of the NAACP's Clean Air Act suit, filed in April 2026 in the same district. The two cases could not be more different in what they ask for. The NAACP case is a federal citizen suit about permits and emissions: whether xAI may lawfully run the turbines at all without Clean Air Act authorization, with a preliminary injunction motion pending and the Department of Justice intervening on xAI's side. Its plaintiffs are civil rights organizations, and its remedy is regulatory.

Haley v. xAI is a private damages case. It does not care whether the turbines have the right permit; it says that whatever their legal status, the noise they make is an unreasonable interference with thousands of homes, and the people living in them are owed money. If the NAACP wins, the turbines could be shut down or controlled. If the Southaven residents win, they get paid for what they have already lived through, and the operator faces a price on every additional day of noise.

Two cases on the same facts in the same courthouse is not a coincidence. It is what happens when a facility's fastest path to power runs through a residential area and the neighbors find both a regulatory hook and a common-law one.

This case is one of a cluster filed within weeks of each other in 2026, and legal observers on both sides describe them as a coordinated plaintiffs' bar campaign modeled on earlier mass tort playbooks. Federal class actions were filed on May 26, 2026 over facilities in Vineland, New Jersey and Dowagiac, Michigan, each on behalf of households within roughly one mile. The Microsoft Fairwater class action in Wisconsin followed in July with a 1.5 mile radius. All plead the same core trio of nuisance and negligence claims, and the doctrinal groundwork comes from the Granbury, Texas crypto mining cases.

Southaven stands out on size and on target. A proposed class of more than 10,000 dwarfs the roughly 1,000 to 1,300 household classes in the other cases, and the noise source is a power plant, not an HVAC system. If the court certifies a class anywhere near that size, the damages exposure becomes the largest in any data center noise case in the country. Our guide to how data center class actions work explains why certification is the fight that matters.

If a data center near you runs turbines or a large generator fleet, the Southaven complaint shows what a winning record looks like:

• Measure at your property line. The residents' readings above 70 dBA are the spine of the case. A calibrated decibel meter and a dated log turn a complaint into evidence.
• Find the ordinance. Southaven's noise limits gave the plaintiffs a negligence per se theory. Your city or county almost certainly has one; the number in it is your benchmark.
• Track the count. Three turbines becoming 57 is a fact about growth, not just noise. Permit filings show how many units are authorized and how many are running.
• Count your neighbors. A class of 10,000 exists because residents organized. One household with a meter is a complaint; a neighborhood with matching logs is a case.

Then talk to a lawyer before the operator's expansion outruns your deadlines. Our free case review connects you with an independent attorney in our network who handles data center cases in your state, at no cost and with no obligation. Whether your situation resembles Southaven's is their judgment; the log and the readings are yours to start today.