A bitter neighbourhood war has finally come to an end after two years of a resident being driven mad hearing his upstairs neighbour using the toilet.
Failed pub owner Joel Steinberg has been fined $12,000 for refusing to finally fix the noisy flooring in his plush Claremont, Perth, flat.
A WA Supreme Court justice found he had shown ‘wilful and defiant refusal’ to obey an order to soundproof the floors and instead just put down some rugs.
Failed pub owner Joel Steinberg was days before Christmas fined $12,000 for refusing to finally fix the noisy flooring in his plush Claremont, Perth, flat he shared with his then-husband Kyle Hams (pictured together)
The protracted dispute began in April 2017 when Samuel Porter complained of ‘intolerable’ noise coming from the apartment above.
Mr Steinberg and his then-husband Kyle Hams had ripped up the floating floorboards and carpets and replaced them with ceramic tiles.
Mr Porter complained but the issue couldn’t be resolved so he took the couple to the State Administrative Tribunal in June 2018 and won.
The couple was ordered to ‘cover or otherwise treat to an extent sufficient to prevent the transmission therefrom of noise likely to disturb the peaceful enjoyment’ of Mr Porter.
Months after the order was made, Mr Porter said he was still hearing noise that gave him ‘significant anxiety’ and frequently woke him up.
This included sharp, loud noises of hard items hitting the ceramic flooring, thudding noises, footsteps, voices, coughing, chairs being moved on the floor, and urination in the toilet.
The couple had ripped up the floating floorboards (pictured before the renovation) and carpets and replaced them with ceramic tiles
The couple was ordered to ‘cover or otherwise treat to an extent sufficient to prevent the transmission therefrom of noise likely to disturb the peaceful enjoyment’ of their neighbour Samuel Porter
He texted Mr Steinberg, who owned 70 per cent of the $750,000 apartment to Mr Hams’ 30 per cent, to complain.
‘I’m not spending $15,000 and moving out of the house to get the floor changed and the builders say there is no proof it is any different from before other then [sic] your say so,’ Mr Steinberg responded.
‘If you want to pay for the floor to be changed you’re welcome to but I’m not paying for it unless I’m ordered by a court.’
So Mr Porter took his case to the Supreme Court and in August this year Justice Paul Tottle found Mr Steinberg and Mr Hams in contempt.
Mr Steinberg claimed that he honestly thought his solution to put rugs down instead of re-doing the flooring would solve the problem
But Justice Tottle didn’t buy this excuse, especially as Mr Steinberg had completed a law degree and was working at a law firm – though not as a practising lawyer.
‘I do not accept that Mr Steinberg was under any misapprehension of what the SAT Order required,’ he said.
‘I find that Mr Steinberg’s disobedience to the SAT Order was not only wilful but defiantly so.’
The apartment complex on Bay View Terrace in Claremont, Perth, where they occupied a flat on the upper floor
Justice Tottle said he very nearly jailed Mr Steinberg but took into account the ‘tumultuous year’ he experienced, which included his marriage to Mr Hams breaking down
Mr Steinberg was ordered to get the work done properly and to have the noise tested to reduce it from 75 decibels to 55.
He finally had the work done in early December but Mr Porter argued he should be fined for contempt, and Justice Tottle was inclined to agree.
‘I find Mr Steinberg’s conduct was motivated by a desire to avoid spending the money on remedial works coupled with the belief that the applicant would not have the resources and determination to enforce compliance,’ he said.
‘Mr Steinberg sought to avoid the requirements of the SAT Order by placing rugs on the floor.
‘This was a manifestly inadequate approach to compliance.’
Justice Tottle said he very nearly jailed Mr Steinberg but took into account the ‘tumultuous year’ he experienced.
Mr Steinberg in August 2017 took over The Vic Hotel in Subiaco with his business partner Bevan Marwick and in March 2018 starting offering beer for $3.50 a pint in an effort to bring in customers.
‘We don’t make a huge amount of money from the $3.50 pints, but people normally buy a more expensive item within half an hour or an hour of coming,’ he said at the time.
However, just a year after the pub entered the Perth ‘beer wars’, the business went bust and was liquidated by administrators.
Mr Steinberg and Mr Marwick put the debts at about $1.4 million but administrators concluded it was closer to $3 million.
Mr Steinberg’s pub The Vic hotel, which he owned with business partner Bevan Marwick (centre, with Mr Hams right and Mr Steinberg left) also went bust
Mr Steinberg told the court he was personally being pursued for at least $200,000 over the collapsed business and even a modest fine would be hard to pay.
His relationship with Mr Hams also fell apart earlier this year and the much younger man moved to Melbourne.
The pair had been together since 2012 and married at the Matilda Bay Restaurant in Perth in April 2017, though the union was not legal until gay marriage came into effect last year.
Mr Hams didn’t show up for the August hearing as he was already gone, and Mr Steinberg bore the brunt of the judicial judgement.
Mr Steinberg was also in October sacked from his $100,000-a-year job as chief operating officer of Symonds & Co Legal.
‘The financial and emotional stress meant that he had not been thinking straight and, in effect, had led him to make bad decisions,’ Justice Tottle said.
Mr Steinberg has three months to pay the fine, along with Mr Porter’s thousands of dollars worth of legal bills, which will be split with Mr Hams.