‘Spiteful’ couple face losing home after using spiked gate to block off neighbour’s meter
A FEUD between neighbours over a gas meter has become so bitter that one faces losing her house. Carol Dickinson, 76, and her husband have been at war with their neighbour, Mojgan Casillas, 50, for 14 years over the meter. Mrs Dickinson, branded aggressive and ‘ spiteful’ by a judge, is accused of erecting a spiked gate around the meter and stabbing another neighbour who intervened in a row. The case has left Mrs Dickinson and her husband Frank, 82, with a potential £200,000 legal bill after a judge found in Mrs Casillas’s favour. But now the couple, from Stockport, are battling to overturn the decision at the Court of Appeal. Senior judges heard that the costs are secured against the couple’s home of 29 years and they will have to sell up if they lose. The troublemaking’ pensioner and her ‘ ‘bombastic’ husband ‘painted themselves as decent and honest people’, the court previously heard. Judge Charles Khan told Manchester County Court in 2015 that their ‘ attempts to convince me were cynical and, frankly, failed spectacularly’. Mrs Casillas’ gas and electricity meters are located in the eight-foot driveway between the two homes. They are on a wall that can only be accessed from the Dickinsons’ drive – with the retired couple claiming their neighbour had no right to inspect them. The row began in 2003 when the Dickinsons refused a gas company permission to access the meters. They erected a locked gate on the path to their home and attached to it a cast-iron bar with spikes running across the top. Mr and Mrs Dickinson insisted that it was a ‘decorative feature’. Tensions spiralled further in 2004 when Mrs Dickinson was unsuccessfully prosecuted over alleged racist remarks towards Mrs Casillas. Mrs Casillas tried to sell her home in 2006, ‘no doubt as a result of the problems she was having with Mr and Mrs Dickinson’, the judge said. The court heard how Mrs Dickinson at one stage tried to cut down the ‘for sale’ sign with a carving knife – but was stopped by another neighbour from doing so. The judge said: ‘What did Mrs Dickinson, an honest and decent accommodating neighbour do? She stabbed him, for which she was convicted.’ The judge ruled that the couple had ‘substantially interfered’ with Mrs Casillas’s right to inspect, read and carry out maintenance works on the meters. They were ordered either to take down the gate, or to give Mrs Casillas a key. After the 2015 ruling, the Dickinsons were ordered to pay crushing legal costs, with Mrs Casillas’ alone coming to over £200,000. Judge Khan said: ‘Mr Dickinson was evasive. Mrs Dickinson was an aggressive, spiteful troublemaker.’ Their ‘ collateral reason’, he added, for fighting the case in court was that ‘they wanted the meters moved’. Challenging the ruling at the Court of Appeal, the Dickinsons’ barrister, David Nichols, argued Mrs Casillas had been given more extensive rights of access to her neighbours’ land than she was entitled to. The Dickinsons did not object to engineers working on the meters and utility providers had agreed to move them ‘at no cost’, he added. Lord Justice Longmore and Lord Justice David Richards have now reserved their decision on the couple’s appeal and will give their ruling at a later date. Outside court, Mrs Dickinson said she felt ‘traumatised’ by the long-running dispute. Their son, Peter, said: ‘The whole thing has mushroomed into a situation that could result in my parents losing their home.’