Having a dispute with your neighbour? Well, before you call your lawyer, think about this well-known (at least in legal circles) decision by the Court about feuding neighbours taking up valuable and limited judicial resources.
The Case: Morland-Jones v. Taerk, 2014 ONSC 3061 (CanLII)
The Dispute:
Neighbours. Mutual allegations about family pets, profanity, disturbing the peace and misbehaviour generally. An injunction was sought.
The Outcome:
A pox on both their houses. The Court dismissed all of the claims and, effectively, admonished both sides for usurping the limited resources of the judiciary as a forum for their Hatfield-McCoy-style dispute. Both sides, which obviously were sufficiently wealthy to fund this litigation, got no costs.
Here is the actual decision:
ENDORSEMENT
[1] The parties to this action live across the road from each other in Toronto’s tony Forest Hill neighbourhood. The video footage played at the hearing shows that both families live in stately houses on a well-manicured, picturesque street. They have numerous high end automobiles parked outside their homes.
[2] The Plaintiff, John Morland-Jones, is an oil company executive; the Defendant, Gary Taerk, is a psychiatrist. They do not seem to like each other, and neither do their respective spouses, the Plaintiff, Paris Morland-Jones and the Defendant, Audrey Taerk.
[3] In this motion, the Plaintiffs seek various forms of injunctive relief on an interlocutory basis. It all flows from the Plaintiffs’ allegation that the Defendants have been misbehaving and disturbing their peaceful life in this leafy corner of paradise.
[4] As counsel for the Plaintiffs explains it, the Plaintiffs’ house is ringed with eleven video cameras for security purposes. Two of them are aimed directly at the Defendants’ front door and driveway. They record, 24/7/365, every movement in and out of the Defendants’ home. The Plaintiffs can see when Ms. Taerk leaves to go shopping, they can study what the Defendants are wearing every morning when they pick up their newspaper on the front step, they have a videotaped record of when Mr. Taerk goes to work or walks his dog, etc.
[5] Nothing that the Defendants do escapes the Plaintiffs’ video camera lens. The cameras trained on the Defendants’ house may or may not provide the Plaintiffs with a sense of security, but as demonstrated by the dozen or so videos produced in this motion, the Plaintiff’s “security system” is as much a sword as it is a shield.
[6] The hearing before me started off with counsel for the Plaintiffs playing a short excerpt from security footage shot by the Plaintiffs several years ago, in which Ms. Taerk is seen performing a “poop and scoop” after a dog did its business on her front lawn. The Plaintiffs’ security camera shows her crossing the street with the plastic bag-full in hand, and then walking toward the Plaintiffs’ driveway where the garbage cans were out for collection. Although the impugned deed actually takes place off camera, Ms. Taerk can be seen moments later returning to her side of the street empty-handed.
[7] Apparently, much to the consternation of the Plaintiffs, she deposited the goods in the Plaintiffs’ garbage can. In doing so, she failed to walk to the back of her house to place it in her own receptacle like a truly good neighbour would do.
[8] The “dog feces incident”, as counsel for the Plaintiffs calls it, is a high point of this claim. At the hearing, it was followed by counsel’s description of a cease and desist letter sent to the Defendants in 2008 by a lawyer then representing the Plaintiffs, which describes what is now referred to by counsel as the “dog urination issue”. This letter enclosed photographs – apparently stills taken from the Plaintiffs’ non-stop video footage – documenting Mr. Taerk walking his dog and occasionally allowing it to lift its leg in a canine way next to the bushes lining the Plaintiffs’ lawn.
[9] The Defendants did not respond to this erudite piece of legal correspondence. Counsel for the Plaintiffs characterizes this silence as an “admission”, although it is unclear just what legal wrong was being admitted to.
[10] And it goes downhill from there. For example, the Defendants are accused of occasionally parking one of their cars on the street in a legal parking spot in front of the Plaintiff’s home. The Defendants do this now and then, according to the Plaintiffs, just to annoy them. This accusation was admittedly pressed rather sheepishly by Plaintiffs’ counsel, since the Plaintiffs have conceded that they park one of their own cars in front of the Defendants’ home every day. Indeed, the Plaintiffs cannot help but concede that fact, since their own non-stop video surveillance of the Defendant’s house shows the Plaintiff’s car sitting there day after day.
[11] The Plaintiffs also complain quite vociferously about the fact that the Defendants – in particular Ms. Taerk – are in the habit of sometimes standing in their own driveway and taking cell phone pictures of the Plaintiffs’ house across the street. Apparently, the Plaintiffs, who keep two video cameras trained on the Defendants’ house night and day, do not like their own house being the target of Ms. Taerk’s occasional point-and-click.
[12] The Plaintiffs also accuse Ms. Taerk of taking pictures of the Plaintiffs’ housekeeper taking their dog for its daily constitutional. The video tapes show the housekeeper leading the dog to what they describe as its favorite grassy spot in a parkette only feet from the Defendants’ front lawn. The housekeeper has deposed that she goes there with the dog every day. Ms. Taerk has made of show of documenting that activity.
[13] Another complaint submitted by the Plaintiffs is that Mr. Taerk has taken up the habit of walking by their house with a voice recorder in hand, trying to catch some of the verbal exchanges between the parties. According to Mr. Taerk’s affidavit, Ms. Morland-Jones occasionally shouts profanity or other insults at him when he is on his walks, so he now only ventures onto the road armed with his dictaphone. He tends to hold it at the ready in his right hand as he walks rather than holstering it on his hip.
[14] The controversy has even extended to other lucky residents. The Plaintiffs summoned under Rule 39.03 no less than four of their neighbours to testify on the pending motion, no doubt endearing themselves to all of them. One witness, a lawyer, was asked to confirm that he had warned the Plaintiffs about the Defendants when they first moved into the neighbourhood; he responded that can recall saying no such thing. Another witness, a professor, was asked to confirm that she sold her house for below market value just to get away from the Defendants; she said she did not.
[15] Each of the summonsed witnesses was asked by Plaintiffs’ counsel to confirm the affidavit evidence sworn by Mr. Morland-Jones that the Defendants are difficult people. None of them seemed to want to do that, although one of them did recount that the Defendants had objected to a renovation permit that the Plaintiffs once sought, and that the matter had proceeded to the Ontario Municipal Board. Another of the neighbours was asked to recount the rude nicknames that some neighbourhood children had given Ms. Taerk when she was a substitute teacher at a nearby school.
[16] In what is perhaps the piece de resistance of the claim, the Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants – again focusing primarily on Ms. Taerk – sometimes stand in their own driveway or elsewhere on their property and look at the Plaintiffs’ house. One of the video exhibits shows Ms. Taerk doing just that, casting her gaze from her own property across the street and resting her eyes on the Plaintiffs’ abode for a full 25 seconds. There is no denying that Ms. Taerk is guilty as charged. The camera doesn’t lie.
[17] For their part, the Defendants have not been entirely innocent. They appear to have learned that the Plaintiffs – and especially Ms. Morland-Jones – have certain sensitivities, and they seem to relish playing on those sensitivities. They realize, for example, that Ms. Morland-Jones does not enjoy having her house photographed, and so Ms. Taerk tends to take her cell phone out and point it at the Plaintiffs’ house precisely when Ms. Morland-Jones can see her doing it.
[18] Ms. Taerk has testified that, in fact, she has not taken any pictures but rather has been pretending to do so by simply pointing her phone and clicking it randomly. Ms. Taerk presents this as a justification for not producing any photographs in the evidentiary record, but of course the explanation reflects more malevolence than what it attempts to excuse. In any case, Ms. Morland-Jones can be counted on to respond as predicted. It is a repeated form of hijinks that could, if a sponsor were found, be broadcast and screened weekly, although probably limited to the cable channels high up in the 300’s.
[19] The same is true with Mr. Taerk’s voice recording technique. Although Mr. Taerk may have started carrying this device in order to record Ms. Morland-Jones’ spontaneous eruptions, cause and effect have now been reversed. Mr. Taerk appears to enjoy walking by the Plaintiffs’ residence with his dictaphone conspicuously raised to shoulder level when he sees Ms. Morland-Jones in her garden, which then prompts the very outbursts that he was at first reacting to. On one of the tapes, Ms. Taerk can actually be heard prompting Mr. Taerk to go out and goad Ms. Morland-Jones in this fashion.
[20] The Plaintiffs’ teenage son has testified that when he was 10 years old, Ms. Taerk instructed him to stay off the public parkette adjacent to her home, saying that it belongs to the Defendants. He also deposed that when he was 16 the Defendants appeared to be photographing him one day as he sat in a parked car in front of his house – or, more accurately, just across from the Defendants’ house – with his girlfriend. He speculated, but could not entirely recall, precisely what he and the young woman were doing in the car at that moment.
[21] The antics have only gotten worse since then. Ms. Morland-Jones has shouted at the Taerks from her front yard, and Ms. Taerk has given Ms. Morland-Jones “the finger” from her front driveway. The Defendants have apparently called the police on the Plaintiffs numerous times in recent years; the Plaintiffs have responded by retaining a criminal lawyer to attempt to have a peace bond issued that would restrict the Defendants’ movements. All of that has been to no avail.
[22] Now the Plaintiffs have pursued civil litigation. To their credit, or perhaps to the credit of their counsel who has advised them well in this regard, the Defendants have not counterclaimed. Having acted provocatively to egg the Plaintiffs on and to prompt this gem of a lawsuit, the Defendants did not need to bring any claim themselves. The Plaintiffs have been their own worst adversaries.
[23] In my view, the parties do not need a judge; what they need is a rather stern kindergarten teacher. I say this with the greatest of respect, as both the Plaintiffs and the Defendants are educated professionals who are successful in their work lives and are otherwise productive members of the community. Despite their many advantages in life, however, they are acting like children. And now that the matter has taken up an entire day in what is already a crowded motions court, they are doing so at the taxpayer’s expense.
[24] As I explained to Plaintiffs’ counsel at the hearing, a court cannot order the Defendants to be nice to the Plaintiffs. Litigation must focus on legal wrongs and legal rights – commodities which are in remarkably short supply in this action. As my colleague Perell J. put it in High Parklane Consulting Inc. v Royal Group Technologies Ltd., [2007] OJ No 107 (SCJ), at para 36, “[i]t is trite to say that making a living is a stressful activity and that much of life can be nasty and brutish. Tort law does not provide compensation for all stress-causing and nasty conduct that individuals may suffer at the hands of another…”
[25] I cannot help but comment that the courts as public institutions are already bursting at the seams with all manner of claims. To add to that public burden the type of exchanges that these parties have engaged in would be to let the litigious society stray without a leash – or perhaps without a lis. I note the observation made to this effect by the Supreme Court of New York in Johnson v Douglas, 734 NYS 2d 847, 187 Misc 2d 509, at 510 (2001):
Although we live in a particularly litigious society, the court is not about to recognize a tortious cause of action to recover for emotional distress due to the death of a family pet. Such an expansion of the law would place an unnecessary burden on the ever burgeoning case loads of the court in resolving serious tort claims for injuries to individuals.
[26] What is true regarding the death of a family pet is certainly true regarding the scatology of a family pet. There is no claim for pooping and scooping into the neighbour’s garbage can, and there is no claim for letting Rover water the neighbour’s hedge. Likewise, there is no claim for looking at the neighbour’s pretty house, parking a car legally but with malintent, engaging in faux photography on a public street, raising objections at a municipal hearing, walking on the sidewalk with dictaphone in hand, or just plain thinking badly of a person who lives nearby.
[27] There is no serious issue to be tried in this action. The Plaintiff’s motion is therefore dismissed.
[28] Both counsel have submitted costs outlines indicating that the parties have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Costs awards are a discretionary matter under section 131 of the Courts of Justice Act. In exercising that discretion, Rule 57.01(1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure authorizes me to consider a number of factors including, in Rule 57.01(1)(d), “the importance of the issues”.
[29] There will be no costs order. Each side deserves to bear its own costs.
