On a leafy street in Forest Hill, where luxury cars are parked in the paved driveways of lavish homes, two neighbourhood couples are locked in a most unneighbourly battle.

It’s unclear how it all began, but the “dog feces incident” and the “dog urination issue” were among key pieces of evidence in a recent Ontario Superior Court hearing, along with security camera footage of one neighbour gazing at the other’s home for precisely 25 seconds.

The dispute has been marked by goading, shouting, 24/7 surveillance, the flipping of the middle finger, the alleged parking of vehicles with intent to annoy, the recording of insults and profanities on a dictaphone, the flagrant filming of a dog-walking housekeeper, and more recently, civil litigation.

“It is a repeated form of hijinks that could, if a sponsor were found, be broadcast and screened weekly, although probably limited to the cable channels high up in the 300’s,” Justice Ed Morgan wrote this week in a wry ruling that did not attempt to mask his frustration.

The neighbours don’t need a judge, Morgan concluded. They need “a rather stern kindergarten teacher.”

John Morland-Jones, an oil company executive, and his wife, Paris Morland-Jones, are suing their neighbours Gary Taerk and Audrey Taerk for damages totalling roughly $1.8 million over a litany of alleged offences, including a “campaign of harassment that has spanned nine years.” The Taerks deny the claims and argue in a statement of defence that the Morland-Joneses are the ones who have waged a campaign of harassment against them.

Justice Morgan’s May 20 ruling stemmed from an interim motion heard last month seeking “various forms of injunctive relief,” which he flatly dismissed. The lawsuit continues.

The Morland-Joneses purchased their 21 Burton Rd. home a little over a decade ago for $1.6 million, moving in across the street from the Taerks, who have owned their house at 35 Vesta Dr. since 1983, property records show.

The lawsuit was filed shortly after an altercation between Paris Morland-Jones and Gary Taerk in August 2012. Police were called and Morland-Jones was charged with assault, but the charge was later withdrawn by the Crown, court records show. In her civil suit, Morland-Jones seeks damages against Taerk for “malicious prosecution” — claiming the neighbours lied to police about the incident — and alleges he is the one who committed assault by striking her with an audio recorder and causing “serious bruises.” The Taerks deny her claim.

Approached at his home Wednesday evening, Gary Taerk, a psychiatrist, politely refused to comment. Across the street, the Morland-Joneses came out to their front stoop. “We have absolutely nothing to say,” the husband said. “They are the trash over there,” the wife added as her spouse ushered her back inside.

Central to the quarrel are 11 security cameras stationed on the Morland-Jones’ property, two of which are aimed directly at the Taerks front door and driveway, Justice Morgan noted in his ruling.

“They record, 24/7/365, every movement in and out of the Defendants’ home,” the judge wrote. The dozen clips produced as evidence suggest the video system “is as much a sword as it is a shield.”

The motion hearing last month began with a short surveillance clip showing Audrey Taerk “performing a ‘poop and scoop’ after a dog did its business on her front lawn,” the judge recounted. Carrying a plastic bag, Taerk then walked across the street toward her neighbours’ garbage bins, briefly exiting the camera’s range, and returned to her house moments later empty-handed.

The “dog feces incident” — “a high point” of the claim, the judge noted — was followed by the “dog urination issue,” which provoked the Morland-Joneses in 2008 to send a cease-and-desist letter to their neighbours, with attached photographic evidence “documenting Mr. Taerk walking his dog and occasionally allowing it to lift its leg in a canine way” next to the bushes lining the Morland-Jones’ property.

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The Morland-Joneses have also complained “quite vociferously” that Audrey Taerk has snapped cellphone photos of their house while standing across the street in her own driveway. “Apparently, the Plaintiffs, who keep two video cameras trained on the Defendants’ house night and day, do not like their own house being the target of Ms. Taerk’s occasional point-and-click,” the judge wrote.

In what the judge called the “piece de resistance” of the legal action, the Morland-Joneses allege that the Taerks sometimes stare across the street at the Morland-Jones abode. As evidence, the plaintiffs produced a 25-second video of Audrey Taerk doing exactly that.

The Taerks “have not been entirely innocent,” the judge wrote. “They appear to have learned that the Plaintiffs — and especially Ms. Morland-Jones — have certain sensitivities, and they seem to relish playing on those sensitivities.” Audrey Taerk testified that she had only pretended to take photos of the Morland-Jones’ house, an explanation that “reflects more malevolence than what it attempts to excuse,” the judge wrote. Similarly, Gary Taerk initially began carrying a dictaphone to record Paris Morland-Jones’ “spontaneous eruptions,” the judge wrote, but later used it to “goad” her, walking past her house with it “conspicuously raised to shoulder level,” in an effort to prompt outbursts.

Justice Morgan chastised the feuding neighbours for taking up “an entire day in what is already a crowded motions court” and “doing so at the taxpayer’s expense.” Both parties have spent “tens of thousands of dollars” in legal fees, the judge noted, awarding not a penny to either couple. “Each side deserves to bear its own costs.”