Two East Germantown neighbors had a falling out so dramatic that two reality TV shows had to tell their story

It’s not uncommon in Philadelphia to have a neighbor who is a cat lover. Some even feed stray cats and turn their homes into a refuge for feral kittens. It can be cute. But that is until those cats get into the neighbor’s lawn forcing the resident to mow an urine-infested lawn and breathe in dust from a pile of cat feces accumulating for years.

That is exactly what happened between East Germantown resident Marice Johnson and the neighborhood’s resident cat lady Jean Galliano, in July 2024.

An incident that is now the basis for a lawsuit, a Judy Justice episode, and an episode of the HBO reality show Neighbors.

It was the last straw for Johnson. He asked Galliano to keep all nine of her undomesticated cats from crossing over property lines and defecating on his family’s lawn.

“My daughter is 4 going on 5. She’s never been able to enjoy her front yard,” Johnson says on the HBO show.

Galliano refused, Johnson stopped the lawnmower, and walked over to one of her make-shift cat shelters and beat it into a pile of scraps.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do next,” Galliano says in Neighbors. “He’s very unpredictable. If my husband wasn’t dead, he’d go over there and kick his a—.”

She sought retribution by taking their neighborly dispute to a small claims court last fall. Then she dropped those charges before seeking justice from another courtroom; this one helmed by famed justice Judith Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy on TV.

The dispute makes up the second episode of HBO’s new reality TV series. Created by Dylan Redford and Harrison Fishman, the show explores intense and wildly-bizarre disputes among neighbors across the country.

Titled “The Farm,” the episode also follows a rift between a retiree named Darrell and his neighbor Trever, who starts raising livestock on his grandmother’s property, much to the dismay of his neighbors in a small suburban community in Kokomo, Ind.

Redford (who is Robert Redford’s grandson) and Fishman, who have previously worked on 2021’s The Big Parade, share an obsession with online neighbor fight videos. When they received a chance call from a company seeking TV show ideas, the two directors thought centering real neighbor-to-neighbor clashes would make for great television.

For months, casting director Harleigh Shaw and story producer (and Redford’s sister) Lena Redford sifted through small claims court filings across the country and searched for people who would agree to air their neighborly linen on camera.

“This was a story with a lot of layers and really interesting people, and we thought we should really look into this,” Dylan Redford said of Galliano and Johnson’s case.

Fishman, a Philly native, said the two neighbors are representative of his hometown in two very different ways.

“[Galliano] really embodies what I love about Philly. She’s just shamelessly herself, and so excited to tell us about it. And [Johnson] is so funny, and his family was so fun to hang out with.”

They started filming with the neighbors last fall.

Their dispute, the crew found out, started shortly after Johnson and his wife Amala moved into their Northwest Philly rowhome nearly six years ago. But with the birth of their daughter, Johnson said his and Galliano’s quarrels intensified.

“I said ‘Ma’am, we just moved here and have a newborn’,” Johnson says on the show. “I just don’t want the cats on my property at all.” From Galliano’s point of view, Johnson was a disgruntled, cat-hating neighbor whose “bezerk” behavior led to the civil case filing.

She recorded a video of Johnson slamming and kicking the cat shelter she had built for one of her cats, named Butter. She claimed it resulted in nearly $2,826.90 worth of damages. Galliano also tried to file criminal charges against Johnson, but “they wouldn’t let me do it,” she said on the show.

But she soon found a way to litigate the dispute when she and Johnson received an unexpected invite to Judy Justice last fall. Turns out, Judy Justice producers were also, coincidentally, sifting through the same court claims and Johnson and Galliano’s fight stood out.

The two neighbors soon flew out to Los Angeles soon after.

Confident that she would earn the favor of Judge Judy, Galliano said she will go from nine to 500 strays once she secures a legal victory.

“[Judy] is an animal activist,” Galliano says in the show, before getting to LA. “She’s going to help me.”

Redford and Fishman were barred from filming on the Culver Studios set, but the Jan. 18 episode of Judy Justice, titled “Catty Neighbors Caught on Tape,” shows Galliano suffering a crushing loss.

In her classically stern and blunt tone, Judge Judy said Galliano’s reckless care for un-collared and unvaccinated cats had become a “community problem,” one directly impacting Johnson’s livelihood. She urged a noticeably combative Galliano to sell the home she’s turned into a “crack hole,” and purchase land where her cats can roam free without interference.

Until then, the reality TV judge said, “be a better animal caretaker.”

“Judge Judy ate her for f–ing lunch. It was so bad," Galliano’s friend Nina Medley, who tagged along for the hearing, says on the show.

Judge Judy’s judgment awarded Johnson $2,000, and Galliano a total of $0.50.

The Neighbors episode shows Johnson and his wife celebrating outside the court room, while Galliano silently drives out of the studio lot.

Redford and Fishman made sure to show the lives of Johnson and Galliano outside of the dispute.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Johnson said he was kicked out of middle and high school. He, along with his three brothers, faced incarceration in his youth. In the years since, he has transformed into a dedicated family man and the owner of a clothing line. During the episode, he pulled out a rack of his custom designs; shirts with the words “God Bless Whoever Hating On Me.” He also spoke about how meaningful it was for him to buy his three bedroom house; he wanted to give his family the kind of life he and his siblings never experienced.

Galliano, on the other hand, lives a very different lifestyle.

When she’s not praising a Jesus Christ hologram, or absorbing “life-enhancing energy” from a nearby Quantum Healing Room, the screenwriter attempts (and often fails) to collaborate on films with the likes of Mel Gibson and producer Paul Michael Ruffman.

“If our show was just doing funny gag stuff, it would be no different than any other prank show or TikTok video,” Redford said. “Part of what defines our show against all that is that we provide the kind of emotional context that makes people understand why someone cares about their home or neighborhood so much.”

Now back from the West Coast, Johnson and his daughter are able to play in their front yard, for the first time in six years. As is evident from the episode, there is now a pergola and fence around Johnson’s yard that keep Galliano’s cats out.

“As weird as it may sound, blessings are coming out of something that felt like a curse at one time,” Johnson says in the show.

Galliano, standing just outside the fence’s barriers in the episode, says Judge Judy’s ruling won’t stop her from feeding cats or from getting them into her house.

“Wood fences can’t keep cats out. Cats climb wood,” she says with absolute certainty.

Fishman, who recently spoke to Galliano, said she now feeds cats less frequently, and that her colony of strays has dwindled in size.

“It sounds like the [dispute] has completely died down from [Galliano’s] perspective,” said Fishman, who is hopeful that the show shines a brighter light on Galliano’s screenwriting career and Johnson’s clothing brand.

As for season two of Neighbors, which was renewed last month, he wants to include more stories of Philly neighbors, who, like Galliano and Johnson, will embody the “bezerk” qualities that make his hometown folks so unique.