You can do all the “polite neighbor” things first—plant a living wall, put up a fence, try to tune it out—and still end up feeling like your own house has turned into a worksite. That’s what Vanessa Carlton and John McCauley told a Rhode Island judge after loud construction activity started next door and didn’t let up.
In their court filings and testimony summarized in the source post, the couple said they planted arborvitaes and built a privacy fence to get their home back. It didn’t work. The noise still came through, and they said it was affecting everything from basic comfort to their ability to make music inside their own place.
The quiet they bought into didn’t last
Carlton and McCauley bought and lived at 141 Post Road in Warwick, Rhode Island, in the Pawtuxet Village Historic District. Their property was zoned residential, and they described the early soundscape as what most people would expect: road traffic, plus occasional airplane noise.
Then, in July 2024, the baseline changed. Next door at 175 Post Road—zoned light industrial and owned by Artak Avagyan and Lee Beausoleil—activity ramped up with construction-related work. A crane company had moved onto the site earlier, and a company called JOGO Corporation began using the property for work tied to construction…