My ‘bully’ neighbour’s rotten apples fell into my garden from her tree – now she has to pay £200,000
A “SCHOOL bully” gardener smacked with a £200,000 court bill after her neighbour sued over rotten apples has lost a bid to fight her case again.
The High Court threw out claims by apple tree owner Antoinette Williams that her wasp-sensitive neighbour Barbara Pilcher “fabricated” evidence against her.
The pair clashed in court after falling out over a series of issues, including Mrs Williams’ 40ft tree dumping hundreds of rotting apples onto Mrs Pilcher’s lawn each year.
Mrs Pilcher had previously been hospitalised after being stung by the wasps and said she could not use the bottom of her garden due to swarms of the nasty critters.
The menacing situation left her feeling “like a prisoner” in her home.
She sued, accusing Mrs Williams of a campaign of “creepy” harassment during the dispute.
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She won her case last October when county court judge Recorder Lawrence Cohen QC ruled in her favour.
And last week, the case went to the High Court, where Mrs Williams tried to overturn the judgment, accusing her neighbour of “fabricating” evidence during the five-day trial last year.
But the gardener – who has won prizes for her flowers as a member of Dunsfold and Hascombe Horticultural Society – now faces having to pay out around £200,000 in damages and lawyers’ bills after High Court judge, Mr Justice Soole, rejected her bid for a new trial.
The court heard Mrs Williams moved into £600,000 Frensham Cottage, in Dunsfold, near Godalming, Surrey, almost 40 years ago.
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While Mrs Pilcher bought the adjoining three-bedroom £500,000 Farleigh Cottage in 2010.
But the two women began a bitter feud over the position and state of a garden fence, used by Mrs Pilcher as a right of way down the side of her neighbour’s house.
Fallen apples from the tree and a smelly compost bin in Mrs Williams’ garden were amongst other outdoor issues that blighted the pair’s relationship.
Mrs Pilcher’s barrister, Oliver Newman, said during last year’s trial that she had to take matters into her own hands, cutting back her neighbour’s tree when Mrs Williams failed to do it herself.
It resulted in a “barrage of allegations” from Mrs Williams, which along with other incidents Mrs Pilcher claimed “led her to fear confrontation” with her neighbour.
‘COMPLETELY ABNORMAL’
At the end of the Central London County Court trial, Mrs Pilcher was handed compensation for harassment, which she had told the court had led to her “dreading coming home.”
The harassment saw Mrs Williams repeatedly peering in through Mrs Pilcher’s windows, “monitoring” her comings and goings and “standing and watching.”
The judge branded Mrs Williams’ behaviour “completely abnormal and disturbing”, and her campaign of watching “caused alarm and distress to Mrs Pilcher and her family on an ongoing basis”.
He accepted Mrs Pilcher’s complaint that Mrs Williams deliberately had loud phone conversations in her garden so she could hear, in which she accused Mrs Pilcher of having mental health problems.
Mrs Williams denied the allegations, but the judge accepted they happened.
They added: “The kind of conduct alleged rather reminds me of bullying behaviour by school children trying to cause distress and exclude one of their number.”
The dispute over the tree was resolved between the neighbours during the trial, with Mrs Williams agreeing “to have the tree professionally pruned so that it is well away from the boundary.”
But at the High Court, Neil Vickery, representing Mrs Williams, argued the trial judge had made a series of errors, resulting in an “unjust” ruling and a crushing costs bill, which was a “major issue” for her.
The kind of conduct alleged rather reminds me of bullying behaviour by school children trying to cause distress and exclude one of their number
Mr Justice Soole
The judge had found as a whole that Mrs Pilcher was more reliable as a witness than Mrs Williams – but had not given enough thought to evidence that Mrs Pilcher had “fabricated” a key part of her claim, the barrister said.
As part of her case alleging that Mrs Williams had obstructed a right of way alongside her house, Mrs Pilcher had put forward a series of photographs showing items blocking it.
But he said metadata in the images showed that it must have been Mrs Pilcher who moved the items to block the passageway, since they were absent in one picture and then there moments later.
The barrister also complained that, out of six years of CCTV footage at the houses, Mrs Pilcher had put forward only 30 minutes to back up her case of being “watched” by her neighbour.
And he also argued that the ruling that Mrs Williams should pay 75 per cent of the total costs of the case was wrong.
This was off the back of an allegation of negligence in relation to damp ingress into Mrs Pilcher’s house, which had been rejected.
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But at the end of a day-long hearing, Mr Justice Soole rejected Mrs Williams’ bid for a new trial, saying that there was no hope of any of her arguments overturning the ruling.
The decision leaves Mrs Williams having to pay £12,000 damages, as well as picking up 75 per cent of the £243,000 costs bill for the original trial and her lawyers’ bills for her failed appeal.