Hedge fund trader Sarvenaz Fouladi, 38,(pictured outside court) says she has been subjected to a constant bombardment of noise from Ahmed and Sarah El Kerrami and their three children
A wealthy singleton is suing her ‘noisy’ neighbours, claiming the ‘intolerable’ racket of their young family has ruined the peace and tranquility of her luxury flat.
Hedge fund trader Sarvenaz Fouladi, 38, from Kensington, west London, says she has been subjected to constant noise from Ahmed and Sarah El Kerrami and their three children.
The children treat the place like a ‘playground’, running around and dropping toys, while the parents host late night parties, she told Central London County Court.
The financier says her work life has been affected due to lack of sleep and her social life ruined by the ordeal.
But lawyers for her neighbours say the financier, who is single and lives with her mother, is being ‘hypersensitive’ to the sounds of a normal family.
Their barrister, Gordon Wignall, said all she has heard is the sound of ‘ordinary folk doing ordinary things that ordinary folk do’.
The sounds of the kids playing upstairs are simply ‘ordinary domestic child noises from time to time’, he told the court.
Miss Fouladi has no ‘private personal life of her own’, he added, and had made ‘completely unfounded’ complaints against the El Kerramis.
And she was reduced to tears when he questioned her about her ‘sadness’ in not having settled down when all her friends had already done so.
The court heard Miss Fouladi and her mother, Fereshent Salamat, lived happily in St Mary Abbots Court, where flats go for well over £2m, for years without any noise from above.
It was only when work was done prior to Ahmed and Sarah El Kerrami’s arrival in 2010 that their lives began to be blighted, she claims.
After they moved in, her tranquil existence in the fifth-floor apartment off High Street Kensington came to an end, she told Judge Nicholas Parfitt.
Sounds from the boiler, a fridge, taps and the fireplace above began to disturb her sleep at night and relaxation during the day.
The financier says her work life has been affected due to lack of sleep and her social life ruined by the ordeal at the hands of Ahmed and Sarah El Kerrami(pictured outside court) and their children
At that time, the family also had two young children, who ran around for hours on end, dropping toys and making a racket, she said.
‘They used it like a playground, kids running and dropping things for seven hours non-stop,’ she said.
‘Before the flat was renovated and all the walls were demolished and the floors were taken out, there was no noise heard from the flat above ours.’
Denying she is obsessed, she continued: ‘I just want to live my life in peace. It’s my home. It’s where people go for peace and quiet.
‘How am I supposed to unwind in my home when I am not able to do so? The noises that come down are intolerable.’
For the El Kerramis, Mr Wignall suggested Miss Fouladi was not prepared to experience even the slightest noise in her apartment.
‘If a pin drops, that is it, because it is not what you experienced before,’ he put to her.
He claimed she and her mother had continuously ‘pestered’ porters in the block with complaints about their neighbours.
They had recorded sounds and kept a log of noises they said they had heard, he added.
In one entry about sounds heard in the afternoon, record was made of ‘child’s voice, dragging toys on the floor, chair pulled, someone tapping on kitchen side deliberately’.
The barrister continued: ‘I hesitate to use the word ‘unhinged’, but this sort of accusation has the impression of being completely irrational.
‘If I said to you, ‘you may have been hearing ordinary little noises from ordinary residential occupation that shouldn’t offend you’, what do you say?’
Miss Fouladi replied: ‘It doesn’t offend me, it disturbs my ordinary living. These are just examples.’
The court heard Miss Fouladi was born in Iran but has been living in the UK since she was a very young child and works as an execution trader for a hedge fund.
The court heard Miss Fouladi and her mother, Fereshent Salamat, lived happily in St Mary Abbots Court,(pictured) where flats go for well over £2m, for years without any noise from above
But she is often late for work, she told the court, after being kept awake by noise from the flat above. It had had a devastating impact on her life, she continued.
‘I have chocolate at 9am in the morning to stay awake,’ she told the judge.
‘I’m not 12 years old. I was a 30-year-old woman with everything. I had a good career, a good home and great social life.
‘The last seven-and-a-half years, I have been subjected to what they have done, my life has stood still. I cannot rest at all in my own home from the noise.’
Mr Wignall said the El Kerramis are normal people who have done nothing wrong.
‘They have only ever lived a sober and normal lifestyle with young children they care for during the day,’ he said.
They want to live their lives in peace with their neighbours and had offered to settle the dispute by doing work to improve sound insulation, he continued.
He asked Miss Fouladi: ‘Given you are eight or nine years without the family life your friends and acquaintances have had, was this not a golden opportunity to say ‘yes, I will take up this offer’?
But Miss Fouladi said the offer was not to carry out the work which she had been advised was necessary.
Miss Fouladi – who said the case was costing ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ – is suing the El Kerramis for alleged ‘nuisance’.
She is also claiming against the overseas company that owns her neighbours’ flat and St Mary Abbots Court Ltd, the freehold owner of the whole block.
She wants damages and comprehensive steps taken to solve the alleged noise problem.
‘Ideally I want it back to the way it was before the works were done, before the acoustics in the flat were changed,’ she told the judge.
The El Kerramis and both companies deny her claims. The hearing continues.