Businessman sues millionaire neighbours over the noise caused by new wooden floor

A high-flying businessman is locked in a battle with his neighbours over claims they are ‘torturing’ him with the noise generated by their wooden floors.

Sergey Grazhdankin, 42, and his wife, Maria, claim their lives in a £1m-plus apartment in a gated art deco development in West Kensington, London, became a misery after new neighbours moved into the flat above them.

The couple say they have since been subjected to a constant assault of noise- including kids playing and crying, creaking joists, footsteps and noisy conversations – from City banker Medhi Guissi and his wife and family upstairs.

They had previously enjoyed peace and quiet in their three-bed apartment, but the installation of wooden floors had shattered that and left them feeling as though they are in a flatshare, they say.

Mr Grazhdankin, who runs an insurance services company, is now suing his neighbours over the alleged ‘nuisance’ caused by the noise in a case which has run up around £250,000 in lawyers’ bills.

At Central London County Court, Mr Grazhdankin asked Judge Tracey Bloom to order his neighbours to tear up their floor and lay it again in a way which eliminates the noise.

But investment manager Mr Guissi and his wife, Meriem El Harouchi, are fighting the case, claiming that Mr and Mrs Grazhdankin cannot complain about the normal everyday sounds of a family in their own home.

They say their neighbours have become oversensitive to the normal day-to-day noise of family life, having lived for many years with only an elderly single lady as a neighbour above them.

Previously, the Grazhdankins had an elderly lady living above them and told the court that they very rarely heard noise from upstairs, other than the occasional banging of a door.

But after Mr Guissi and his wife bought the property, they began a major refurbishment of the flat, tearing out walls, changing the layout of the rooms and replacing the floor.

In a statement put before the court, Mr Grazhdankin said that, after a year living in Germany, he and his family had moved back into the flat in August 2020, but soon found the noise upstairs ‘unbearable’.

‘During the week, we are woken up daily between 5.30am and 7.30am by the noise from above and we can hear the floor making creaking sounds, walking sounds and the sound of moving furniture right above our main bedroom,’ he said.

‘On weekends we are woken up between 7am and 8am by walking, banging, jumping sounds, children running and voices.

‘During the day, throughout the whole week, there is a lot of noise of similar nature, beams creaking floor, walking, dropping things on the floor, moving objects on the floor, children crying, shouting and voices.

’Overall, living in our apartment feels like living in a shared apartment with another family. It is impossible to have our peace and live in our own rhythm.’

‘Living with this every day since we moved is torture,’ he added from the witness box.

His wife said the only time they are free from the noise above is after Mr Guissi and his family go to bed, which can be after 10pm at night, making the Grazhdankins dependent on their neighbours’ daily schedule.

‘We are automatically able to tell not only if they’re at home but also who exactly of the family is at home, which room they’re in and sometimes what kind of activity they are engaged in.

‘It feels depressing because I do not have a feeling of privacy, peace and quiet in my own home.’

Mr Grazhdankin said his wife had been more badly affected, now suffering from stress and insomnia, and feeling afraid as she tries to sleep as she is waiting to be woken.

Following complaints and a previous court hearing, Mr Guissi and his wife installed carpets, but the noise is still present and continues to affect the Grazhdankins, he said.

‘The problem is not the installation of wooden floors in itself,’ he said.

‘It is that these wooden floors were not fitted properly and, for a whole host of other reasons, the work was not “conveniently done” – that is, done with regard to their neighbours, because they did not install a proper floating floor which would have guarded against excessive impact and airborne noise.’

He continued: ‘Works must be done with regard to your neighbours – the basic principle is you treat your neighbour the way you expect them to treat you.

‘In this case, the reasonable reaction would have been for the defendants to go back to the company that laid the floor.’

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But representing the neighbours, barrister Tom Morris said that what the Grazhdankins are complaining about is the sound made by acts of ‘ordinary residential occupation’ of a family home.

The acts ‘are not done maliciously or with the intention of disturbing the claimant, but reasonably and with proper consideration for the interests of the claimant,’ he said.

Even Mr Grazhdankin himself had written in an email that ‘what we are hearing on a daily basis is a product of a normal family life,’ said the barrister.

‘Mrs Harouchi even gave her downstairs neighbours two days’ notice of a celebration of her son’s birthday in 2019,’ he continued.

‘Accordingly, the noise complained of in this claim cannot as a matter of law amount to an actionable nuisance.

‘As to the complaints about creaking, the court is invited to prefer the evidence of the defendants’ expert that creaking is ‘not uncommon’ in buildings of this sort,’ he added.

Mr Grazhdankin is also the freeholder of the building, North End House Ltd, for nuisance and for breach of covenants in their leases.

However, all parties deny liability, with North End House barrister David Hoffman suggesting that the complaints are just about the ‘difference between having a family upstairs and having a single person upstairs.’

The trial continues.

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