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Singer Vanessa Carlton’s noise complaint against R.I. neighbor ends up before state Supreme Court
The “A Thousand Miles” singer and her husband have described the noise as “maddening,” “relentless,” and “hellish.”
Grammy-nominated singer Vanessa Carlton made her way downtown before Rhode Island’s Supreme Court Thursday in the latest chapter of her legal battle over her Warwick neighbors’ “maddening” noise.
Carlton and her husband, Deer Tick singer-songwriter John McCauley, won a preliminary injunction in 2024 after they alleged the owners of an industrial property next door subjected them to unlawfully loud noise and harassed them by filming their house.
The injunction ordered the abutters, Artak Avagyan and Lee Beausoleil, and their tenant, North American Crane & Rigging LLC, not to exceed Warwick’s maximum noise level of 60 decibels or undertake any operations or activity that “harasses and/or reasonably interferes” with the family’s “use and enjoyment of their own property.”
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But Avagyan and Beausoleil appealed, challenging parts of the injunction.
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“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Avagyan told NBC 10 WJAR. “We’ve tried to be neighborly. It just isn’t working out with them. We don’t make much noise there.”
McCauley and Carlton, whose 2002 debut single “A Thousand Miles” shot her to stardom, bought their home on Post Road in 2021 and moved in next to a 15-acre property zoned for light industrial use, according to 2024 court filings.
At the time, Carlton testified that the house was meant to be a “forever home” where they could enjoy outdoor activities with their daughter and dogs. The couple even renovated their garage into a music studio for workspace, court documents state.
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Carlton said the “maddening” noise issues began in the summer of 2024, after Avagyan and Beausoleil leased a portion of their property to a construction company that produced “near continuous noise from vehicles, construction equipment, generators and cranes,” according to court documents. She also accused Avagyan of walking along the property line and videotaping the family in their backyard — an allegation he denied.
McCauley, meanwhile, described the noise as both “relentless” and “hellish” and noted his tinnitus is made worse by loud sounds.
Despite the injunction, neighbors who spoke to NBC 10 WJAR claimed the noise hasn’t stopped.
“Turn on a leaf blower in your kitchen and then tell me how you like it. That’s what they’re living through,” Nicholas Hemond, an attorney for Carlton and McCauley, told the news outlet Thursday.
Avagyan and Beausoleil are “bad neighbors,” he added. “They fundamentally don’t respect anyone around them, not just my clients. There’s a surrounding neighborhood that’s being impacted by their behavior.”
Thomas Dickinson, an attorney for the defendants, disagreed. According to The Providence Journal, Dickinson argued Thursday that the injunction order was vague and didn’t provide specifics about which operations might be prohibited on the property.
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Separately, Avagyan and Beausoleil are challenging a 2025 Warwick Zoning Board of Appeals decision that found subcontractors at their property had exceeded the uses allowed under the light industrial zoning, according to ecoRI News.
The state’s Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the noise injunction appeal.
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