A vegan woman from Australia has taken her meat-eating neighbours to the Supreme Court due to the smell of meat and fish from their barbecues which wafts into her own garden, the Independent reports.
Cilla Carden from the Perth suburb of Girrawheen insists that her neighbours have persistently and deliberately sought to disturb her in her backyard by cooking meat on their barbecue, smoking cigarettes, and bouncing basketballs.
This is what Cilla Carden had to say about the matter in an interview with 9 News:"It's deliberate," Carden insisted in the interview with 9 News. "That's what I said to the court, it's deliberate."
The massage therapist has reportedly been in conflict with her neighbours since last year with no resolution in sight. This prompted Carden's decision to take the matter to court. Her other demands include the removal of weeds in her neighbours' garden, that they repaint the fences they share, repay the cost of damaged plants, and that their children stop disturbing the peace with their toys.
"They’ve put it there so I smell fish, all I can smell is fish," she added. "I can’t enjoy my backyard, I can’t go out there. It’s been devastating, it’s been turmoil, it’s been unrest, I haven’t been able to sleep."
However, the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia has since rejected her claims that there was any breach of residential law.
"What they [the neighbours] are doing is living in their backyard and their home as a family," the subsequent judgement read.
The state's supreme court also rejected an appeal, and Carden was informed she could not take her case any further.
"The volume of material that she has produced ... suggests that these matters have to an extent become somewhat overwhelming," said Chief Justice Peter Quinlan.
In spite of these two decisions - the last of which was made in July - Carden has since told Australian media she is looking for other avenues of legal action, according to the Independent.
