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My upstairs neighbors are a couple in their 60s. To briefly explain what happened and what happened: water was seeping into the walls of my apartment from the two bathrooms upstairs. This had been going on for several years. I didn't notice it for the first few years, but by the time I did, the water had seeped from the inside of the walls to the outside. Water started dripping slowly from the kitchen ceiling (at a rate of one drop every few seconds). When I came home from summer vacation with my child, rows of black mushrooms had grown on the walls of the master bedroom.
Then I spoke to them politely, asking them to fix it as soon as possible (the process was lengthy, and the root cause was a crack in their bathroom pipe). It dragged on for over two years. Countless times I pleaded with them in a humble and gentle manner, but to no avail. The woman of the house kept making excuses like "my husband is going hiking or fishing" to keep me waiting, or she'd get impatient and say, "Don't bother me, go talk to my husband! This is driving me crazy!" After being left with dripping water (visible dripping, not seepage) for over two years, I decided to give up on the supposed neighborly relationship I'd always run into. And of course, things became much easier after that!
First of all, the man upstairs is a public official. I've been repeatedly calling the mayor's hotline (12345) and writing letters to report him for bullying the weak (I'm a single mother raising a kindergarten child at home, and my husband and I live in different cities), violating public order and good morals, acting like a rogue, damaging the downstairs property, and making it impossible for us to live in peace. Our residential complex and the company's office building are adjacent, and their company leaders have intervened at least five times to mediate. After each mediation, the agreed-upon terms are completely ignored a minute later!
I called the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau and asked them to enforce the law (remove the mop sink and washing machine water pipes that the other party had illegally modified in the master bedroom). Even if there are relevant regulations, the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau is practically unable to enforce the law on this kind of interior renovation, especially on a house that was renovated seven or eight years ago. However, the person in charge from the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau came to my house to coordinate three or four times.
Then, I filed a lawsuit in court. It was a slow process, but very effective. The other party received the summons and that very night started making a huge noise upstairs. Without a second's hesitation, I called the police. The police came, but only to mediate between the two parties. I was just using the police's influence. When they arrived, they listened to my explanation of the situation before going upstairs to find the other party. I followed them. As soon as the door opened, without hesitation or regard for appearances, I unleashed a torrent of profanities at the man in his sixties. The police advised me not to get agitated. Things were relatively calm for a few days after I called the police. A few days later, the other party probably got upset again and poured water on my clothes and blankets that I had hung out to dry on the balcony in the dead of winter, claiming it was for watering their plants! I recorded the water flowing down and called the police. After calling the police, I cursed at the window like a shrew, using vulgar language like "beast" (I felt like my 985/211/Double First-Class university education was a waste). The police arrived and again tried to mediate.
Finally, I kept posting notices in the stairwell, sometimes even at the entrance of his company cafeteria. Basically, it was all about "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," demanding an apology from the person making the noise. It said things like, "Don't spit in my doorstep; spitting is like an animal defecating anywhere. May the person making noise in the middle of the night have their whole family die!" The notices were basically a warning to the entire neighborhood. They even posted my complaint to the mayor's mailbox on the community bulletin board near the cafeteria. I kept tearing them down and putting them up again. His company leaders advised me to stop, but I told them to mind their own company's low-class people before expecting civility from me.
The community police also visited both parties countless times to persuade them to stay home.
The trial finally began. The other party was at a loss for words and even slandered me in court, calling me my husband's mistress (probably because my husband rarely shows up), and claiming that my constant demands for repairs and compensation had driven his wife insane. The judge was also quite annoyed. There were two court hearings, and the court inspected the site twice. In the end, the court ordered 50,000 yuan in compensation. Initially, my demand was that they fix their own bathroom to ensure it wouldn't leak, and then I would receive 20,000 yuan in compensation... The other party was arrogant and even threatened me and my child during the negotiation process.
I was generally satisfied with the court's verdict, but to cause more trouble and torment for the other party, I appealed to the intermediate court. Because this process would take a long time, and the other woman has a low tolerance for emotional distress, the litigation costs and the mental anguish inflicted on her were worthwhile.
Including the final application for enforcement, it was actually unnecessary. They didn't know when or how to pay; the court could have just called them. But I submitted the enforcement application first, sent a copy to his workplace, and then wrote to the mayor's mailbox, hoping for assistance from higher authorities to urge him to pay. In the end, he quickly paid the money and the enforcement fee.
The day he made the payment, the court called to tell me not to worry and not to report it to the mayor's mailbox, as the money had already been deposited into my account. Actually, I just needed a pretext.
The other party might have felt aggrieved after paying the money. On the evening of the day I paid, while I was backing up my car downstairs, that man cursed at me, calling me a bz. As soon as I stopped the car, I called the community police. The community police had known about this dispute for more than two years, but they still came to my door to give me a lecture. I said that if they insisted on making a big deal out of it, I would try to find a way within the scope of the law.
After the court hearing, my husband came home on leave one night and deliberately chose midnight to go upstairs and kick down the door. The other party opened the door, and they got into a fight. The police came and took them both to the police station. My husband warned the other party in front of the police that if he caused trouble again, this kind of thing would happen again, and even more seriously! I haven't intervened because I feel that this is not something a man should get involved in. A man who is more foul-mouthed than a shrew should be involved in a lawsuit. When it comes to litigation, we should talk about the facts and the law. Defaming my wife and mistress in court, isn't he asking for a beating?
From then on, the world was quiet. Peace prevailed.
Article source: Zhihu