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Rotten apples core issue in £200,000 legal battle

A dispute between neighbours over rotting apples has led to a £200,000 legal battle, the London Times reports.

The core issue is how rotting apples attract swarms of wasps.

A Surrey resident, Antoinette Williams, has been taken to court by her neighbour Barbara Pilcher, accused of allowing smelly compost and decomposing fruit to pile up.

Pilcher, who is allergic to wasps, told Central London county court that Williams’s apple tree had made her a “prisoner in her own home”, and that she had been unable to use the bottom of her garden because of the stench of compost and hordes of stinging insects attracted to fallen apples from Williams’s tree.

Pilcher accused her neighbour of failing to prune the apple tree.

'Horrific' legal bill

Judge Lawrence Cohen QC was told that Pilcher was understood to have incurred a “horrific” legal bill, with costs totalling £200,000, the London Times reports.

She sought compensation for having suffered years of harassment, trespass and nuisance. She is also asking the judge to impose an injunction regarding her neighbour’s behaviour.

Williams told the court that her neighbour’s case was groundless and “trivial”. She moved into Frensham Cottage in the village of Dunsford, near Godalming, 40 years ago, and Pilcher arrived at Farleigh Cottage in 2010.

In 2013 the pair were involved in a dispute over the garden boundary. That was followed by claims from Pilcher that Williams had blocked her right of way through her garden, and had allowed damp to get into her home.

Pilcher’s barrister told the court that in 2014 Williams refused to cut back the tree, which prompted Pilcher to take matters into her own hands.

Her action with the pruning shears was said to have resulted in allegations from Williams that Pilcher “had cut the tree at an inappropriate time, cut it back too far and caused a poor harvest”.

Rotting fruit

The barrister added: “While her allergy makes her more sensitive to issues of rotting fruit leading to insect activity, any reasonable user would regard the amount of rotting fruit and subsequent issues with wasps and other insects as a nuisance.”

Neil Vickery, for Williams, said that “to seek to elevate irritation between neighbours into a case of harassment is wrong and inappropriate”.