JEY v JEZ

Facts

The claimant lived in an HDB flat directly below the respondent's flat. From late 2024 she heard loud noises at all hours that sounded like pounding with a pestle, knocking, furniture being dragged, heavy footsteps and objects such as marbles being dropped. She found the night-time noises, from about 9pm to 4am, the most distressing and said they caused her stress and sleepless nights. She brought Claim No. 187 of 2025 in the Community Disputes Resolution Tribunal under the Community Disputes Resolution Act 2015, seeking an injunction to stop loud noise, especially at night, and an apology.

Her evidence consisted of audio recordings made between March and June 2025. The respondent and a tenant had lived upstairs since July 2021 and denied making unusual noise, beyond occasionally dropping something by accident. One of the claimant's recordings was made on 20 May 2025, when both of them were overseas. The respondent also produced videos showing that pounding and knocking could be heard inside the respondent's own flat at night while no one there was doing anything noisy.

Issues

1. Whether the claimant proved on a balance of probabilities that the respondent caused excessive noise amounting to unreasonable interference with her use of her home under s 4 of the Act.
2. If so, whether it was just and equitable to make an order under s 5(1) of the Act.

Holding

The tribunal dismissed the claim because the claimant had not proved that the respondent was the source of any excessive noise. With the first stage failing, the tribunal did not need to decide whether any order would be just and equitable. No order was made as to costs.

Reasoning

Noise alone is not enough under the Act: it must be excessive enough to make the interference unreasonable, judged by factors such as volume, timing, duration and frequency. Daytime noise in a dense housing block has to be tolerated to a greater degree, so whether the neighbours worked from home was beside the point, and ordinary night sounds such as footsteps, flushing and the odd accidental drop were not excessive either.

Pounding and knocking late at night could be excessive. But the claimant had to prove who caused it. Recordings made on a mobile phone show only that a sound could be heard in her flat at a given time, not where it came from, and there was no other evidence of activity upstairs that could explain it. Most tellingly, the same noises continued while the respondent and the tenant were abroad, which suggested they came from elsewhere.

Although it was not needed, the tribunal also commented on the second stage, observing that it may shape a more practical order than the one sought and must take account of the everyday noise reasonable people in Singapore are expected to tolerate. It added that sound travels through the structure of HDB blocks in many directions, and that some knocking and marble-like sounds can come from water pipes or building materials rather than from neighbours.

From the judgment