Minnie Driver, 46, is being sued by her neighbor in the Hollywood Hills for allegedly impeding construction on his home and causing damage to it. In a video posted on The Daily Mail, Driver’s neighbor, Daniel Perelmutter, calls Minnie “deranged,” says she “needs to be institutionalized” and claims she “goes into frenzies” and has caused expensive damages to his home, currently under construction. In his lawsuit, he alleges that Minnie has pelted black paint in baby food jars at his house, that she has told him she wishes he was dead, and that she has tried to kill him with her car. For her part, Minnie filed a restraining order against the neighbor last November (which was granted) alleging similar conduct and claiming that he jumped in front of her car twice. Last week, the police were called because Minnie and Daniel were screaming at each other over a delivery truck blocking her driveway.
Here’s the story from The Daily Mail, which is getting the news from TMZ and summarizing three stories here:
Minnie Driver has been accused by her nemesis neighbour of pelting his home with baby food jars full of black paint in a new lawsuit.
[She] is said to have indulged in the rotten behaviour as part of a campaign that has prevented Daniel Perelmutter from completing construction on a property next to her Hollywood Hills home.
According to TMZ, the fuming neighbour says in his court papers his 44-year-old archenemy has been using the baby jars to splatter the paint all over his walls.
He also claims she has been lobbing construction materials onto his property.
And as she continues her alleged campaign to prevent him finishing his construction, he says she has even taken to blocking off his workers’ access for up to eight hours at a time.
Perelmutter is even claiming he could end up dropping dead due to the stress induced by their foul-mouthed verbal clashes, as he has had a heart transplant.
As part of his appeal to the court, he is asking for the removal of an electric gate he used to share with the Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge actress as he claims she has cut off his access.
The legal filing is just the latest in the bitter dispute between the warring neighbours that has been going on for more than a year…
Indeed their feud reached such heights that last November [Driver] obtained a restraining order against the 74 year old.
[Driver] filed documents to Los Angeles Superior Court, in which she alleged Daniel had told her to ‘f**k off and die’ on several occasions, and twice jumped out in front of her car, forcing her to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him.
On one occasion, which occurred a week before she applied for the restraining order, the Riches actress – who has seven-year-old son Henry with former boyfriend Timothy J. Lea – claims she got out of her car and Daniel began cursing at her, and blew cigar smoke in the faces of the children she was with…
The neighbour – who was ordered to stay 15 yards away from the actress – admitted there is tension between himself and the actress due to an ongoing land dispute, but claimed Minnie was more aggressive than him, and that she had tried to run him down with her car.
At first I assumed Driver was the party in the wrong, but she’s the one who obtained a restraining order against the neighbor last November. It does take two to continue a feud like this though, and she’s obviously engaging if she’s screaming at him in the driveway, (allegedly) blocking access to his construction crew and throwing paint at his house. However watch the video interview of this guy on The Daily Mail if you can. This is not some innocent old man being bullied by his neighbor, this is a calculated move meant to smear her. I’m not saying I’m team Minnie at all, this sounds childish and criminal on her part if it’s true, but the neighbor is playing the victim because he wants to win this lawsuit. At the end of the video he says “Since [Minnie] lost her job on TV she’s got nothing else to do but to fight with me. Until she gets a job, this is not going to end. Please tell Fox to hire her and get her out of my hair.”
Photos credit: WENN, Getty, FameFlynet and PRPhotos
Good fences make good neighbors.
There’s no part of that headline I didn’t like.
if someone threw baby food jars at my walls, i’d be more concerned about the broken glass than the paint on the wall actually.
i hate broken glass, you think you’ve cleaned them all, but hey ho, they just hid! and then came back to literally bite you in the soles in the middle of the night a week later.
An I the only one who thinks this is a perfect hilarious movie? Starring Minnie driver of course. Obviously they fall in love at the end. And wedding guests throw black paint baby food jars at their Just Married car drives as it drives into the sunset.
hehe
Don’t know who’s right, but having a close neighbor doing construction can make you crazy – the construction materials she threw was probably crap the workers left on her property. The access she blocked was probably when they needed to use her property for access and she refused to allow it when she wasn’t home – because they had a history of being sloppy and leaving crap everywhere.
Construction between close neighbors sucks.
This makes a lot more sense than the “idle irrational bitch” narrative he is selling.
This is my take as well. In the article it states that last week they were fighting about a delivery truck blocking HER driveway. I’d be pissed too.
Amen. Our last home was in an up-and-coming area of the city. The old houses are wedged too closely together, have short driveways, and there’s no shoulder on the street. So if the neighbors had any workers at their house (or parties!), which was often, they were in or blocking our driveway. It was maddening. I had to ask people to move on a few occasions so I could leave for work. I left a few notes on cars, but I didn’t get mad enough to hurl paint, thankfully. I could totally sympathize with Minnie if this is her case, too.
(We’ve since moved to the sweet, sweet seclusion of a rural area.)
Yep, I agree with this. I’ve lived next door to construction several times in my life and it suuuuuuucks.
I’m not judging or taking sides because anybody can get a restraining order against someone if they can manipulate the judge. It is common for the one at fault to beat the opposing party in a race for a restraining order. If she recorded him being belligerent, threatening, and using fowl language, that could be enough to get a restraining order against him even if she did the same exact thing. Sometimes it’s all about who is cagey enough to get bad behavior on tape or video and get the courts involved first.
A quick search suggests that there is a long, long history of easement issues and lawsuits between various owners of the two properties, including a judgment against this guy in favor of the previous owners. I suspect his “construction” and “deliveries” are calculated to irritate.
Once it said something about a shared fence I thought “uh oh”. Having easements & sharing property with someone who is insane is enough to make anyone loose their marbles.
The more I read, the more he started to sound like a movie villain. A cigar smoking, heart transplant receiving septuagenarian, perhaps with a secret orphanage from whence he pulls his construction crew. Maybe he also has a pet, something cuddly like, say, one of those coconut spider crab things, or a crocodile. Someone call Fox. Call Don Bluth. Coming this fall: Driving Ms. Minnie (Insane!)
Lol!
I second the weird movie plot LOL I WOULD WATCH THIS!
I think all old men that live up in the Hollywood Hills are crotchety, entitled and impossible. And their LA face vanity plastic surgery makes them all look like burn victims. I don’t care, I am Team Minnie on this.
Definitely an equal chance they are both equally crazy. Restraining Orders? Alleged Vehicle Impediments — possible children witnesses? Neighbor construction in general? Can you imagine living next to these guys? “Children, step away from the window. No really, close the curtains.”
“He also claims she has been lobbing construction materials onto his property.”
Why would any construction materials be on her property if he is the one with construction going on? Yeah, if your construction guys dump their stuff on my property, I’m going to lob it back onto yours where it belongs.
“Last week, the police were called because Minnie and Daniel were screaming at each other over a delivery truck blocking her driveway.”
*Her* driveway, not his.
The balance of evidence suggests this guy is the nutjob, not Minnie.
Make her pay for it and give her community service work, maybe painting graffiti?
She is parking her car at his entry, blocking ALL traffic