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The trial in Grazhdankin v Guissi has attracted coverage in the national press, including The Telegraph, the Daily Mail and The Sun. HHJ Bloom sitting in the county court at central London finished hearing four days of evidence and submissions on Friday 6 October 2023 and has reserved judgment.
The main issue in the trial was whether the installation of a new floor resulting in (allegedly) greater impact and airborne sound penetration into the flat below can give rise to a cause of action in private nuisance. HHJ Bloom’s decision will need to make sense of a series of authorities where nuisance claims relating to floors succeeded (such as Stannard v Charles Pitcher Ltd [2003] Env. L.R. 10, Sampson v Hodgson – Pressinger (1984) 12 H.L.R. 40 and Fouladi v Darout Ltd [2018] EWHC 3501 (Ch)) and consider the state of the law in the light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Fearn v Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023] 2 W.L.R. 339.
HHJ Bloom will also need to decide the question left open by the Court of Appeal in Faidi v Elliott Corp [2012] H.L.R. 27: whether a positive covenant to keep a flat covered with carpet can be enforced in a letting scheme against a successor in title to the original covenantor. Importantly, she will also have to identify the limits of what Judge Cooke decided in the Upper Tribunal in Vectis Property Management Co Ltd v Cambrai [2022] H.L.R. 40 (where it was held for the first time that a positive covenant in a letting scheme can be enforced against the original covenantor).
Tom Morris acted for the Defendants, instructed by Irwin Mitchell LLP.
