Well I am not sure how to start. Three yeas ago, we bought this amazing block of land in the Sydney hornsby council area with 270 degree bush valley view. At the beginning, we tried to put in a DA for a double storey house, back and forth with council for 1.5 years and eventually was rejected by council due to a neighbour's objection for blocking their view, and that neighbour' house was double storey. So we gave up the idea of double storey and went with a single storey. Council finally approved the house with rural fire service putting the highest level of construction standard. We thought oh well, we'll just deal with it. If a problem can be solved by money, it not worth getting too upset about it, so we moved on and started construction certificate application process.
Then today, we received a letter from our builder saying we have to put everything on hold because that particular neighbour just took Hornsby council and rural fire service to land and environmental court to declare our development consent being invalid and that they failed to assess our DA properly. Court hearing is next Friday. We couldn't believe it. Council did them a favour by refusing our DA for a double storey and now he's taking council to court to stop us building. Is he crazy or something?
Update - Neighbour redrew court case in Nov 2009 after a few discussions with solicitors of council and RFS and it seems he's not likely to win and the legal cost will be huge.