Loud Toilet Flushing Ruled as Human Rights Violation

From Italy: the country’s supreme court has ruled in favour of a couple who sought action against one of their neighbours on the grounds that the loud flushing noise made by their toilet was “intolerable”.  Excerpts from coverage of the news by The Washington Post:

Italy’s top court has added a new human rights violation to a list commonly thought to include enslavement, torture and forced starvation: the sound of a toilet flushing at night.

That country’s supreme court cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in deciding a 19-year legal battle that began when a couple living in an apartment near La Spezia complained that their neighbors’ new toilet was keeping them awake with “intolerable noises,” according to the Milan-based newspaper Il Giornale.

The court was sympathetic to the couple’s struggle to sleep. The sound of flushing — “aggravated by frequent night use” — compromised their quality of life and violated the right to the free exercise of daily habits established by the European Convention on Human Rights, the appellate judge said, according to Il Giornale.