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May 18, 2008
Retaliation is Never The Answer
Your neighbor is driving you crazy. It's the clack clack clack of the high heeled shoes and the long nails on the family dog on the tile floors above, or the thump thump thump and bang bang bang of the children running and jumping, opening and closing the doors. You have contacted the board, and been told there is not much that can be done about normal daytime noise. So, you decide to "get back" at the neighbors.
Think before you leap. Here's a true story.
It started in a condominum development for seniors. A beautiful downstairs unit came up for sale. The elderly couple, looking forward to retirement in this beautiful community was checking out the unit. The realtor was embarrassed because the resident that lived upstairs seemed to be walking around with heavy loud footsteps. She mentioned that the lady was 85, and must be wearing hard shoes. As it was, this had happened before. In fact, the seller had made a disclosure about the footfalls, stating that although there was only one resident, and she was about 85, the downstairs neighbors could hear the footfalls. Apparently, this woman had established that she did not want downstairs neighbors. Realtors showing the place had come to that conclusion because she was always home, and always "sstomping" around when the lower unit was being showed. However, one couple - potential buyers - were not deterred. They loved the place, and the buyers had discounted the price and were really motivated. So they bought the place. They told the realtor that they would just make friends with the woman upstairs, take cookies, get to know her and ask her to wear lighter sole shoes, or put down some rugs.
Months later, they came to the board. Neither the cookies nor the attempts to make friends worked. The couple asked the board to do something. The Board sent a letter to the woman upstairs and asked some questions, pointing out the problem. Suggestions were made that the woman (aka the 'stomper') wear softer soled shoes, house slippers, or place padded runners in the traffic areas of her unit.
Meantime, the neighbors below like the occasional "barbecued" dinner. They had moved in a gas grill onto their patio and grilled every Wednesday, once a week, like clockwork. The 'stomper' instead of agreeing to make any changes, said that she wore soft soled shoes, that she had rugs, and that she walked on them instead of the hardwood floors.
And, it appeared that the neighbor's complaints incensed her. So she complained about the barbecuing. She wrote to the board and said that it complicated her allergies and she wanted it to stop. In response to the letter to the below neighbors, the Board was told they only did it once a week. That did not seem unreasonable; the Board suggested that on Wednesdays, the stomper keep her balcony door closed. Instead, she took to sweeping her balcony and watering her balcony plants (I should say overwatering) on Wednesday evenings, when the below neighbors were barbecuing. Once they got 'wind' that the stomper hated the barbecuing, they started doing it every night.
Once again, the Board was contacted with the complaint about the barbecuing. The 'stomper' had hired an attorney and the attorney wrote and asked the board to put a development-wide moratorium on barbecuing.
That was clearly overkill. And the Board said "no". However, the Board did propose a solution. The Board arranged to have weatherstripping replaced on the stomper's slider since she was claiming the barbecue smoke seeped into her unit. And the Board wrote to the parties with these demands: the stomper was to look for a way to quiet the footfalls (such as adding traffic area rugs and padding or wearing soft soled shoes) and the barbecuing couple was told to move the barbecue to the other side of their home on a porch, so it would not be below the stomper's balcony.
Neither party complied. Both retaliated. The stomper started sweeping the balcony when the neighbors barbecued. They started barbecuing every night instead of their once or twice a week prior habit. The upstairs neighbor started taking a shower every night late, claiming that she had to wash off the barbecue smoke that had intruded. The downstairs neighbors started flushing their toilet while she was in the shower and turned their TV up loud afterwards. It went on and on.
Then they sued each other. Both sides had insurance carriers get involved. The carriers and the court had a hard time with this one. You just cannot always regulate human behavior, or get people to act reasonably.
Much money was spent. At one point the insurors came to the Board for architectural approval with something they thought might solve at least part of the problem - they had arranged for a specially designed barbecue with a smokestack. The Board denied the application as it did not want a large orange smokestack going up the side of the building where the golfers would have to look at it. It was "back to the drawing board" in the court process.
Eventually the judge "nonsuited" the parties, kicking them out of court, essentially. The newspaper touted "Judge Douses Barbecue Suit".
Even that was not the end. Both parties came back and demanded a Board hearing. All parties were "invited" to come to a board meeting. They brought their attorneys and their doctor statements and the below neighbor brought a DVD of the interview with his doctor stating how his health had declined. The Board's solution - one of the board members would meet with the parties in an attempt to get back some semblance of peace if, and only if, the parties would meet with a mediator or social services rep (they were all elderly), together, to talk.
Neither party would go in the same room with the other. The Board opted out of this. The lawyers threatened to sue the Board, the Board's attorney (me) mailed them the "Judge Douses Suit" story, and that might have seemed the end of it. It was not.
The husband of the couple below died, the wife sold their home and moved back to where their children lived, on the East Coast. I suspect they had to take a considerable loss since they had not only experienced, but exacerbated the situation of the "nuisance" upstairs. The stomper died.
End of Story....Do you want to end up in the same place? Then eliminate retaliation as one of your means of dealing with a difficult nuiance situation.
Posted by Beth Grimm at May 18, 2008 9:52 PM