A millionaire entrepreneur has failed in his attempt to legally compel his upstairs neighbours to fix “intolerable” creaking floors, which he and his wife described as “torture”.
Sergey and Maria Grazhdankin initiated a legal dispute two years ago against their neighbours in a gated art deco apartment building located in west London. The neighbours, Medhi Guissi, a professional at Bank of America’s insurance solutions division in the City, and his wife, Meriem El Harouchi, moved into the flat above the Grazhdankins in 2018 and replaced the existing carpets with wooden flooring. The Grazhdankins had already been living in their upmarket flat for seven years by this time.
The Grazhdankins claimed that the everyday noise from above, including children playing, crying, footsteps, creaking joists, and loud conversations held by their neighbours, had disrupted their lives and made their living situation unbearable. The issue first reached court in 2023, where a judge sided with the Grazhdankins, awarding them £16,087 in compensation for the period before carpets were reinstalled. “During the week, we are woken up daily between 5.30am and 7.30am by the noise from above and we can hear floor making creaking sounds, walking sounds and the sound of moving furniture right above our main bedroom,” he said at the time.
“On weekends we are woken up between 7am and 8am by walking, banging, jumping sounds, children running and voices.”
Despite this somewhat Pyrrhic victory given the size of the legal bills, Grazhdankin, who operates GMBC – the company behind 20agents, a master MGA platform, returned to court, arguing that the carpet replacement failed to resolve the noise issues and that additional work was required to fix the flooring.
Guissi purchased the property in West Kensington for £1.1 million in 2018, a significant investment that included extensive renovations to modernise the layout and replace flooring with wooden boards designed to incorporate acoustic barriers to reduce noise. However, the Grazhdankins claimed the barriers were improperly installed, leading to creaking sounds that disturbed their peace.
“Living in our apartment feels like living in a shared apartment with another family,” Grazhdankin testified, describing the constant noise as making it “impossible to have our peace and live in our own rhythm. Living with this every day … is torture.” His wife added that the noise only stopped when the family upstairs went to bed, usually after 10pm.
The matter returned to court, where Mr. Justice Adam Johnson of the High Court dismissed the Grazhdankins' claim. He concluded that the creaking sounds were “not outside the norm” for such art-deco period properties. Justice Johnson noted that the judge in the original hearing had properly considered the evidence, which included assessments from two experts. While one expert identified significant creaking, the other disagreed. The judge’s ruling favoured the latter opinion, concluding the creaking was not severe.
The Grazhdankins had lived in their fourth-floor apartment in North End House since 2011, claiming little disturbance until Guissi and his family moved in and remodelled the unit above. Before that, the flat had been occupied by an elderly woman, and noise was reportedly minimal.
Justice Johnson stated there was “no realistic prospect” of the Grazhdankins’ case succeeding and denied permission to appeal. As a result, the neighbours are allowed to retain their wooden floors, leaving the Grazhdankins to endure the noise they described as disruptive.
