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01
An elderly man stands outside in his garden wearing a hat and a blue button-down shirt.
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"Hello guys, I need your help! […] My neighbours in front of our house [are] suing us for 55k Canadian dollars because we reverse park when we come home. Just so you know, we never go out after like 10 pm, and when we park, we never put the high beams [on] and we try to turn off the lights as fast as possible (so like max 1 minute of light that goes on their house), but the neighbours said that the light is preventing [them from enjoying their] house when we come back home after 7 pm.
Also, the reason we don’t park the other way around is [that] we have a plug-in car, and if we don't reverse park, the cable doesn’t reach the car. So now that those details are clear, let me tell you about the whole picture. Me and my family been living in this neighbourhood for around 10 years, the neighbours came here a little bit later, and for nearly 8 years there haven’t been any problems [with] this subject, even tho we had our two cars for almost the whole time that we [have lived] here.
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02
The frustrated homeowner looks upset while sitting in front of the entrance to her home.
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The reason why all this started is not even linked to our cars; it’s linked to theirs. About like 8 months ago, he started to park his car in front of our house and we didn’t like it since we couldn’t see my little sibling playing on the street and we ended up by asking him to move the car and he said no, after that we tried to talk [to] his wife to maybe see if she will understand and she said no and that it’s public parking.
After doing some research, we realized that they are actually right and that it’s public, but that they are not supposed to park there for more than 24 hours, but they still did it and started to give us some attitude, so to solve the problem, we just parked our own car in front of our house, and this is where everything started for real.
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At the beginning, as soon as we left the spot the neighbour rushed to put [his] car there just to annoy us and when my dad tried to talk to him he called my dad a mentally [ill] person so there [has] been [some] back and [forth] (nothing serious, no violence and no real threats) and we all together called the police to kind of see what to do about it. The police told everybody just to stop talking to each other, (to us) to let them park there when they need, and (to them) to park their car in front of our house only if they need it. After a couple of weeks of no contact and nothing really happening, we fought that it was over, but then we received something that changed everything.
After this period of no contact, the neighbours tried to contact the city to forbid us from ‘rear parking in our own house’s parking’ and guess what, the city didn’t care about if it makes sense and a lady that was temporarily there told him that he was right and that we had one week to change our cable and our parking to please them, we said no and went to the city to clear it and after a couple of conversations with the city and the people who should’ve been the [ones] to mange this issue told us that we have nothing to change or to do because it was completely in our rights to park however we want.
After this, we were pretty satisfied and thought that it was the end, but just as you read in the title, it wasn’t because just a couple of weeks later, we received a letter ordering us to the Supreme Court in an emergency […] so we had like two days to prepare what we would say and when we came there, we had no lawyer and they didn’t either, but even tho we had just two days of preparation, their demand had been rejected (they wanted us to pay them 10k and stop parking the way we do) and the judge said that first, it’s not even an emergency and second, that car lights are not a disturbance if it’s only for seconds and that they cannot ban us from parking the way we want in our own parking.
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03
An elderly man stands outside wearing a hat and a blue button-down shirt.
Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
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So some time passed, he kept insulting us and following us in the streets and at some point, we got a notice from a legal office telling us that we are now being sued for 55k dollars for the exact same reason. So this dude lost, decided to get a lawyer and try to grab from us 55k. Now it’s still pending but it’s extremely difficult to live with the pressure because yeah there are the conversations with the lawyer and meeting at the court and all but the hardest part is what is happening right now.
This is the last part but just to tell you, I’m in college, my sister in school, my dad is working and my mom is looking for a job so she’s at home most of the day and weirdly he [is] too so right now, as soon as my mom is home alone or [goes] out for a walk, he comes out [and] follows her from a distance. He does it only when it’s my mom alone and it has a really big impact on her. When me and my dad are here, he’s trying to do some things to provoke my dad by playing with kids in front of our house and ‘accidentally [hitting] our cars with a ball’ which doesn’t really do any damage because it’s not strong enough but it scares [us] when we see it in our cameras that are pointed in our parking.
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04
An overhead shot of a parked car in the homeowner's driveway during the day.
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05
The elderly man leans against the fence overlooking his neighbor's property.
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By the way, there are some things I forgot to mention, he’s now parked all the time in front of our house and [put] a camera in his windshield so he’s always recording us and he has one camera in his window that moves and records the street and our house and another one in his door that record our house 24h/7 (which is why he comes out every time when my mom does to follow her) and last thing, we asked his neighbour to testify in court if it comes to court and when he learned that by [his] attorney he directly came to this neighbour and told him that if he testified, he will ask his daughter to tell everyone that she is scared of this neighbour that could testify in our favour (hope it’s clear enough to understand😅). Anyways, all this situation has been going [on] for almost 9 months now and it’s getting really hard to handle so I need your help and experience to understand what could we do other [than] document everything and try to keep ignoring it because I know it’s the right thing to do but I feel that it’s more breaking us [than doing[ anything good for us…"
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06
The frustrated homeowner looks upset while standing in front of the entrance to her home.
Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
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Unfortunately, it seems that the homeowner is at a loss for ways to minimize the neighbor's aggression. However, given that all the cards are in her favor legally, she might as well get a lawyer herself and see this thing out. Unless there is a development that somehow tips the scales toward him, it seems like she has this case in the bag. After all, the only thing she is being accused of here is parking safely in her own driveway.
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