When BAFTA nominated TV director Misha Manson-Smith became neighbours with eighties music hitmaker Mark Arthurworrey in trendy Hackney, it could have led to a pioneering collaboration of sound and vision.
But instead of a creative team-up, living near each other only sparked a six-year residential war - resulting in an expensive legal battle that has ended in the High Court.
This week Mr Manson-Smith was awarded £273,000 in damages after he was 'driven from his home' by a harassment campaign by musican Mr Arthurworrey.
The music producer, who has made tracks for stars including Annie Lennox and Aswad, was accused of pouring water through the ceiling of his flat so that it flowed through the lighting and electrics, as well as repeated flytipping in the garden and playing of 'extremely loud' music.
His ordeal led to Mr Manson-Smith developing an 'anxiety disorder' and ultimately being forced with his young family to leave the £1.2million Victorian flat in Dalston, Hackney, east London.
Together with his writer wife Alex, he sued for harassment at the High Court and has now been awarded damages totaling £273,475 from Mr Arthurworrey, 68, who will also have to foot his £32,000 lawyers' bills.
Ruling this week, Judge Mathew Gullick QC said a harassment conviction and restraining order in 2017 had not stopped Mr Arthurworrey from continuing his harassment of Mr and Mrs Manson-Smith.
'I regard as particularly serious the further incidents of deliberate flooding that occurred in June 2019, after the imposition of that restraining order and immediately prior to the claimants being forced out,' he said.
Mr Manson-Smith was awarded £273,000 for being 'driven from his home' by his neighbour
Mr Arthurworrey denied wrongdoing but was not allowed to defend case in the High Court
At a hearing last year, lawyers for the couple said their troubles began in 2014 when they bought a flat in a converted house in Forest Road, of which Mr Arthurworrey owns the freehold and 'controls' the other two flats in the building.
Their barrister Jamal Demachkie said that 'initial obstructive behaviour' on the part of Mr Arthurworrey, including an incident when 'the gas was turned off,' led to an earlier court clash between the neighbours over management of the building.
Mr Demachkie said Mr Arthurworrey went on to subject Mr and Mrs Manson-Smith, 45, to 'acts of nuisance and harassment for a significant period of time including clashes over use of garden gate, fly-tipping, noise nuisance and refusal of access'.
'Mr Arthurworrey dumped a large volume of rubbish into Flat A's garden, including a mattress....he admits dropping it but says 'this is my garden',' the barrister added.
'My clients do own the front garden and have the right to use the back garden.
'Even if Mr Arthurworrey did own the front garden it would still constitute a harassment to dump rubbish and detritus into it, causing a nuisance and blocking the passageway.
'That's not all. There's the noise nuisance, the blocking of the access to the back garden...this is ultimately six years of harassment directed at Mr Manson-Smith and his family.'
The barrister told the judge that following 'particularly pernicious harassment' the couple had obtained a restraining order over their neighbour
