If your life is blighted by noisy or abusive neighbours, a good lawyer can restore your peace and ensure that the wrongdoers are punished. In one case, a social tenant whose next-door neighbours were assailed by loud music, shouting, swearing and banging received an eight-week prison sentence.
The mother of three children had been arrested several times for breaching a court order that required her to keep the noise down. Her behaviour had continued despite warnings and the straw that broke the camel’s back was her persistent playing of the same popular song, over and over again, at high volume.
In jailing her for contempt of court, a judge found that she had shown ungovernable animosity towards her perfectly decent and respectable neighbours and subjected them to wholly unacceptable levels of disturbance. He warned her that if she failed to respect her neighbours’ rights and to behave as a responsible adult in future, she could look forward to further time in prison.