On top of damages to their neighbour the couple have pay hefty legal fees (Picture: Champion News)

A couple have been hit with crippling legal costs after the residents below them sued them over the noise of their children on wooden floors.

Millionaire banker Sarvenaz Fouladi, 39, could not stand the ‘intolerable’ noise created by Sarah and Ahmed El Kerrami and their three kids.

She said the home above her £2.6 million Kensington apartment was ‘like a playground’ and was keeping her up at night.

Last year, a county court judge awarded her £107,397 damages, ruling the family should have fitted carpeting or soundproofing.

But now the El Kerramis are facing a crushing legal bill after losing a High Court appeal against the judge’s decision.

They have also been told to cover the legal costs of the freeholder of the luxury apartment block, despite Miss Fouladi’s claim against them being rejected.

Sarah El Kerrami has moved to Malta with her husband after the stressful ordeal in the High Court (Champion News )

Miss Fouladi said the ‘constant’ ordeal began after the installation of a new uncarpeted wooden floor in the El Kerramis’ upstairs flat in 2010.

At the original hearing last year, she claimed there was no noise at all before work was done in 2010, before the El Kerramis moved in.

Since then, she and mum Fereshent Salamat, had been bombarded with noise from a boiler, fridge, taps and a fireplace above.

She accused the El Kerrami family used the flat ‘like a playground’, with ‘kids running and dropping things for seven hours non-stop’.

Awarding her damages in May last year, Judge Nicholas Parfitt said it was the noise of simply ‘day-to-day living’ which caused problems.

Ahmed El Kerrami outside the High Court (Picture: Champion News)

Although he found Miss Fouladi and her mum’s evidence was exaggerated, the judge said noise was ‘sufficiently loud to be invasive and disturbing’.

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He said the family and their company which owns the flat, Darout Ltd, should have had installed carpets on the wooden floors in living areas.

When the floor was replaced before they moved in, nothing had been done to limit noise passing between the flats.

The judge found against the couple and their company but dismissed Miss Fouladi’s claim against the freehold owner of the luxury apartment block, St Mary Abbots Court Limited.

However, in an unusual move, instead of ordering Miss Fouladi to pay the freeholder’s costs of defending the case, he also hit the El Kerramis with their bill.

That was on top of their own bills and hundreds of thousands owed to Miss Fouladi.

Sarvenaz Fouladi said the noise upstairs was ‘intolerable’ (Picture: Champion News)

The case took up eight days in county court and the family spent another week at the High Court appealing the decision.

The couple’s barrister Gordon Wignall argued it was wrong to order them to pay the freeholder’s costs.

He said there was no need for Miss Fouladi to bring the company into the case, ramping up the total bill with an ‘unsustainable claim’.

Mr Wignall told the judge the fallout from the bitterly fought dispute has led to his clients leaving the country for Malta.

But Mr Justice Henry Carr dismissed the appeal and said it was the failure of the El Kerramis and their company to make ‘reasonable offers’ to settle the case which resulted in it going ahead.

The luxury block of flats in St Mary Abbotts Court, in Kensington (Picture: Champion News)

He said: ‘I recognise this is an extremely important case for the defendants, having been told that the costs currently being claimed by St Mary Abbots Court Ltd amount to some £400,000.

‘Nonetheless, I consider it’s not appropriate for me to interfere with the decision.

‘I consider it was well within the reasonable ambit of decisions which the judge was entitled to make.

‘It’s extremely difficult to challenge the exercise of a discretion by a trial judge, particularly in relation to costs.’

Neither Miss Fouladi nor lawyers on either side of the dispute were willing to comment on the case afterwards.

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But her mum, Mrs Salamat, who also lives in the flat and gave evidence at the trial, claimed she and her daughter had endured a six-year ‘nightmare’.

Outside court, she said: ‘People think my daughter is getting £100,000 for this, but it has cost her much much more than that.’