A wealthy banker may become £100,000 richer after a judge ruled that her upstairs neighbours pay her damages over the intolerable noise from their young children.
Thirty-eight-year-old Sarvenaz Fouladi lived in a luxury £2.6 million flat, but the noise from the wooden floors above her made her life miserable.
Fouladi had then sued Sarah and Ahmed El Kerrami, whose floor had no carpets, telling the court that the sound of everyday activity from the apartment above her ruins her peace during the day and keeps her up at night.
Miss Fouladi, who lives with her mother at the flat in Kensington, London, said the neighbours’ children treat their flat like a “playground”, running around at all hours.
She said she lived in the flat for years without noise from above to make her life miserable, explaining that it was only after the Kerramis moved into the flat that the noise started.
The mother and daughter kept a diary, noting down noises they objected to, including the sounds of dishes being washed, kids’ voices and “angry breathing”. The children ran around for hours on end, dropping toys and making a racket, she said in her evidence.
“They used it like a playground, kids running and dropping things for seven hours non-stop,” she told the judge.
“Before the flat was renovated and all the walls were demolished and the floors were taken out, there was no noise heard from the flat above ours.”
In his ruling, Judge Nicholas Parfitt said that the El Kerramis and their family company, which owns the flat, should have put carpets on the wooden floors in living areas.
He added that when the floor was replaced before they moved in, nothing was done to limit noise transmission between the flats.
He said,
“I find that the noises are the noises associated with everyday living.
“I find also that those noises include, on occasion, late night parties, but that such parties – even if they do include singing and drumming – are not frequent.
“I find that the noises include those of children playing and running around, including late at night.
“The impact of the noise is sufficiently loud to be invasive and disturbing to an objective standard.
“I am satisfied that, but for the new floor being as it is, the noise disturbance that I have referred to as present would not have been so.”
Miss Fouladi, who is single, was accused by her neighbours’ barrister, Gordon Wignall, of being “hypersensitive” to the activity of a normal family.
