Nightmare neighbour claims couple used daughter's 'deafening' drumming practice as weapon

A woman who had next door's gutters torn out during a £150,000 fight with her has been slammed for her "almost indescribable silliness" and branded "psychologically incapable of acting reasonably" by a .

Translator Celia Tan and her neighbours Robert and Helen Flach went to war in their west London neighbourhood after Ms Tan became annoyed about the Flachs' gutters dumping rainwater on her garden. Ms Tan claimed that as the row raged on, her neighbours used their teenage daughter's "deafening" drumming practice as a weapon to annoy her, while they accused her of ripping out their gutter and repeatedly painting or fixing her door number outside their house.

The row led to a bitter court fight, with the neighbours arguing over the position of the boundary between their houses, rainwater nuisance and multiple claims of harassment against insurance broker Mr Flach and his wife. After a trial at Central London County Court, Judge Alan Saggerson dismissed Ms Tan's case, ordering her to pay the court bill - estimated pre-trial at around £150,000, with £77,500 up front towards the Flachs' bills.

READ MORE:

"Passive aggressive" Ms Tan had taken "spiteful, punitive actions designed to aggravate" her neighbours during the row, having created an atmosphere of "toxicity" in the street, he said in his ruling. However, Ms Tan is fighting on, with her bid to appeal against the decision this week passed to judges' case workers at the High Court in London.

During the trial, the county court heard that tensions between the two families built up after Ms Tan and her daughter Rebecca moved into a two bed house, now valued online at around £700,000, next door to the Flachs' £1.2m home in Old Hatch Manor, Ruislip, in October 2009. The Flachs’ barrister, Adam Swirsky, explained that the core issue between them was the position of the boundary between the two properties, with Ms Tan claiming that it runs through the middle of the wall of the Flachs' garage extension, while her neighbours insisted it is a few inches beyond the wall.

Ms Tan, who came to the UK in 1995 to study English, complained that defective guttering perched on the garage’s flank wall was over the boundary line, dumping rainwater on her land, and as a result she decided to have it removed. She countersued her neighbours for £85,000 to compensate for trespass, encroachment and damage, and also an injunction barring the Flachs from siting what she claimed was intrusive CCTV near her home.

She alleged a series of intrusive acts, including trespass and damage to fence panels, a mature tree and garden wall, as well as theft of numbers from a fence and "nuisance by videoing her and her family in her garden both with handheld devices and CCTV." On top of that, she said she and her daughter, Rebecca, had been plagued by Mrs Flach encouraging her daughter Maria to play the drums at a “deafening” volume.

Ms Tan’s daughter, Rebecca Edge, gave evidence that the Flachs would leave their daughter at home playing the drums on Sunday mornings when they went to church, adding: “She would play for 40 minutes per day on average.” It was put to Mrs Flach in the witness box that she was being accused by her neighbour of harassing Ms Tan by "encouraging" her daughter to play the drums.

Mrs Flach replied: “Maria was at the local school where she was playing drums. She was sitting her grade five exams and needed practice time.” Ms Tan had banged on the walls with “spades and other implements” and the Flachs had ultimately got rid of the drumkit, she said, although Ms Tan and her daughter denied the banging.

Giving judgment, Judge Saggerson described Ms Tan as "passive aggressive," adding that he did not find her "in most respects to be a reliable or accurate witness." He said: "There were many instances where she was clearly just making things up as she went along," he said.

"Her counterclaim for damages was largely an exercise in fiction. It is a retaliatory and spiteful series of inventions, paying no regard to logic or reality." He said that, at one point, Ms Tan had embarked on a "campaign of almost indescribable silliness" by painting or affixing her door number on the Flachs' side of the front fence.

"If the claimants removed number signs, they were justified because they were in the wrong place and caused confusion with the identification of the properties," he said. He added: "Her conduct over many years demonstrates that she is psychologically incapable of acting reasonably."

He was partly critical of the Flachs' actions during the long row, which he said had "not always and in every respect been impeccable." He said: "Closer attention to detail about their own property by the claimants would have prevented the gutter problem arising in the first place."

It had also been "unwise" for them to allow their daughter to use their extension room for drumming practice, which is "not just to be measured in decibels but in the irksome repetitive thuds of a percussion instrument." He found in favour of the Flachs on the boundary issue and also in relation to Ms Tan having removed their guttering, despite finding it was their fault it had been allowed to deteriorate as it had needed replacing years ago. "It became clogged with debris, it sagged, overflowed and slowly began to disintegrate," he said. "This resulted in occasionally significant wet-weather overflows of water...as this gutter failed to cope."

The overflows had been "once in a blue moon" and not often enough to found a successful claim against the Flachs, said the judge. He ordered that the guttering be replaced at the Flachs' cost, because it needed replacing years ago, and dismissed all of Ms Tan's complaints of nuisance and harassment, ordering her to pay her neighbours' lawyers' bills, with £77,500 up front, on top of her own.

The judgment was given in April, but not made public until this week after Ms Tan's application to appeal was passed to High Court judges' case workers. The case will now be processed and passed to a High Court judge for decision.