McBride: (Edward and Mary); re Troublesome neighbours legal row, Dublin Circuit Civil Court (19/2/13)**See Ray Managh story slugged TORTURE. Pic. shows: Edward and Mary McBride of Villa Park Gardens, Navan Road, Dublin leaving court yesterday (Tues .) after the hearing.****see also HANWAY Ml see Torture Cx & Hanway Marian see Torture CX (Pic: CourtPix.)

THE constant jangling of wind chimes in a neighbour's back garden was described by an 83-year-old yesterday as a deliberate act of cruelty against her and her husband.

Mary McBride, of 40 Villa Park Gardens, Navan Road, Dublin, told Judge Alison Lindsay at the Circuit Civil Court that next door neighbours Michael and Marian Hanway, who live at No 38, would deliberately hang out several wind chimes at a time.

"It was torture," she said.

Barrister Pat O'Brien, counsel for the McBrides, asked Judge Lindsay for maximum damages of €38,000 against the Hanways who are demanding a similar amount of compensation for bad neighbourliness.

Intimidation

Judge Lindsay has heard allegations by both sets of neighbours that each had been deliberately caused emotional suffering, harassment and intimidation including assault and trespass.

Both families are claiming damages and restraining injunctions against each other.

The Hanways alleged the McBrides, both in their eighties, kept their home under camera surveillance.

When Breffni Gordon, counsel for the Hanways, told Mrs McBride she had ignored letters of mediation from his clients, she said: "I will not ever have anything to do with that family." She said the Hanways, who have alleged a "tyranny of intimidation" against the McBrides, had broken their word in the past and her family had suffered so much at their hands that she did not trust them.

Eddie McBride told Mr O'Brien that Mr Hanway was often like "a wild man" and Hanway had once hosed him down across their garden boundary. He had to get a change of clothing.

He said Hanway would call him "a bollocks" for no apparent reason and his son, Martin, who he accused of poisoning grass outside the McBride home, had called him "a bleedin' w***er."

Garda Sergeant John Broderick, married to one of the McBride daughters, said Mr Hanway had complained about him to the Garda Ombudsman Commission which had been rejected the complaint.

Edward McBride, junior, a retired garda, said Hanway had called him scum who had been "dragged up."

Maura McBride said she had seen Marian Hanway on CCTV shovel a substance across grass outside her parents' home and then brush it in. She had recorded 191 incidents throughout the 13-year neighbours' dispute.

Judge Lindsay has reserved her judgment until Friday.

hnews@herald.ie