Dad has to pay £20,000 after he went to get son’s football from neighbour’s garden

A father has been ordered to pay nearly £20,000 – including £11,000 to a dead man – after trying to retrieve his crying son’s ball from a neighbour’s garden.

Chaim Adler, 35, told MailOnline he ‘tried to ask nicely’ when a neighbour refused to give his eight-year-old son’s ball back while visiting his parents in Golders Green, north London.

Speaking of the lawyer neighbour Warren Bergson, Chaim said: ‘He shouted at my son and left him in tears.

‘He was very upset and I went round to the house to speak to him and get the ball back.

‘My aunt lives in the house and she had given us permission to go into the garden at any time. The Bergson’s lived in a granny flat at the end of the garden.

‘The first time the ball went over I was not even at the house but when he shouted at my son and refused to hand it back I went across to ask for it back.’

Instead he got ‘five years of hell’ after motor law expert Bergson his psychologist wife Dr Edel McAndrew-Bergson sued him for trespass and harassment.

A judge ruled in Bergson’s favour, awarding the couple £19,800 in damages and leaving Adler with £40,000 in legal fees.

‘Chaim Adler’s behaviour was aggressive, humiliating and intimidating,’ Judge Stephen Hellman said at Mayors and City County Court.

‘This behaviour goes beyond that which merely causes upset.’

But the Adlers claim problems only started when the Bergsons moved next door to Chaim’s parents in 2017.

‘We have lived here for 40 years and never had any problems until the Bergsons moved in to their flat’, Esther Adler, 69, said.

‘This whole thing should never have come to court. We did not want to go to court, but they were determined to sue.

‘I don’t know how he will find the £20,000 to pay them. It is just ridiculous. My son is fuming.’

The families first clashed in August 2017 when the Bergsons realised water was spilling into the garden from the Adlers’ grandkids’ paddling pool next door.

This led a confrontation with Zavy Adler, Chaim’s father.

Problems continued from here, with a football at the centre of them.

A ball was repeatedly ‘crashed’ into the separating fence every weekend, according to the Bergsons, who claimed it was a way of ‘intimidating’ them.

The couple had to take out British Library memberships to escape.

It was again at the centre of a confrontation as trouble peaked and the Bergsons grew exasperated with the noise one long weekend in May 2018.

Dr McAndrew-Bergson grabbed the football when it entered her garden and threw it over another neighbour’s fence.

Mr Bergson then confiscated it, taking it into his flat on another occasion over the same weekend in order to get some peace.

An enraged Chaim Adler, a frequent visitor at his parents’ home, twice entered the Bergsons’ garden, the Bergsons said.

The Bergsons claimed he was ‘snarling’ and mocking Mr Bergson on the first occasion.

On the second, he had tried to push his was into the flat while ‘aggressively’ demanding the ball back, the Bergsons said.

Dr McAndrew-Bergson said they had shut the door.

But an incensed Chaim banged on the door, pressed his face against the window, and was ‘baring his teeth and growling’ at them, they claimed.

Chaim also entered the garden with a ‘small army’ of Adler family members, who the Bergsons claim used them as their ‘evening entertainment.’

The judge described it as ‘haunting’ when Dr McAndrew-Bergson said her husband had been surrounded that weekend, with Chaim mocking him, shouting ‘here here’ and repeatedly kicking his right leg in the air.

Chaim denied wrongdoing, saying he had just had a ‘back and forth’ with Mr Bergson while trying to protect his son.

Giving judgment, Judge Stephen Hellman said Chaim had been provoked by the Bergsons’ refusal to give back the ball, but he had gone too far.

He said: ‘I accept he was angry because they had upset his son, but he has not shown me that his course of conduct was reasonable and I am satisfied that it was not.’

The judge ruled Chaim had harassed the Bergsons and trespassed when ‘at least part of his body’ entered their flat during one of the incidents.

Following a trial and judgment in 2022, the case went back to court again last week for Judge Hellman to rule on the amount in damages due to the Bergsons.

Mr Bergson died after the initial court trial.

Judge Hellman order Chaim to pay £8,800 compensation to Dr McAndrew-Bergson, along with £11,000 to her husband’s estate.

The judge also ordered Esther and Zavy Adler to pay £1,700 compensation due to interference with the Bergesons’ right of way over a passage leading to their flat, which had been frequently obstructed by building materials.

The case will return to court a later date for a decision on who pays the lawyers’ bills.

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