This funny story began in the Italian city of La Spezia 19 years ago. In 2003, someone started flushing the toilet in the middle of the night, and a couple living next door found the flushing noise “too loud.”
As expected, the affected tenants sued their noisy neighbors. The lawsuit dragged on for almost two decades, moving from one court to another, until it finally reached the supreme court, which decided the case in favor of the plaintiffs. In their decision, the judges, referring to the principles established by the European Court of Human Rights, noted that the toilet was not only “too noisy”, but also “used too often at night”, which exacerbated its negative impact on neighbors, interrupting their sleep and endangering their health.
The apartment that contained the “too noisy” toilet belonged to four brothers. They installed a water tank in the wall adjacent to the neighbors’ bedroom. The court ordered the brothers to remove the cistern from the wall and pay the neighbors 500 euros (about $565) in compensation for each year it was there. Thus, the total amount of compensation will be about $10,700.
Newspaper headline:
Costly noise