HAMILTON - Provincial police failed in their duty to protect a southern Ontario family from years of lawlessness and criminal activity in a situation "akin to a war zone" at a site occupied by aboriginal protesters, court heard Thursday.

David Brown and Dana Chatwell's Caledonia, Ont., home borders a former housing development occupied by Six Nations protesters since February 2006 and is behind a protester-erected barricade.

Since that time they have been subjected to "repeated, unlawful acts of intimidation," Evans said, citing numerous examples.

Spotlights shine at their house all night long, loud noises including chanting and drumming continue throughout the night, Chatwell and Brown allege in their statement of claim.

They have been threatened and subject to arbitrary rules about passage to their home through the barricade and on one occasion their home was ransacked and painted with racist graffiti -- and although police do not intervene they have acknowledged many of the incidents, it's alleged.

Chatwell and Brown are suing the province, the police force and several senior provincial police officials including Commissioner Julian Fantino and former commissioner Gwen Boniface, for $5 million in general damages and $2 million in punitive damages.

"The unlawful, intimidating, destructive conduct of the native protesters towards the plaintiffs over 3 1/2 years is a circumstance for which we have virtually no paradigm, no experience in Canada," their lawyer John Evans said in his opening statement.

"Canadians live in a society with expectations that the police will protect them from threats, from vandalism, from intimidation."

Police are not generally expected to protect everyone from unexpected circumstances, Evans said. They cannot be standing outside every bar or at every home of an aggressive spouse, but this situation involved known, repeated and unpoliced criminal activities over 3 1/2 years, he told the court.

"That just does not happen in Canadian and Ontario society," Evans said.

Brown and Chatwell "live in a lawless world they don't recognize," he added.

"They have fundamental, reasonable, appropriate expectations that they will receive police protection and they have not received it."

Evans stressed his clients are not challenging any right to peaceful assembly, rather the claim is about the police obligation to protect Chatwell and Brown and their home.

In addition to the plummeting value of their home and lost income from Chatwell's home hairstyling business that she had to close, the couple's suffering includes depression, anxiety, alcohol problems, post-traumatic stress disorder and having to send their teenaged son to live elsewhere, Evans said. They are unable to relax for fear of attack from protesters, he said.

"The plaintiffs lived in fear for their personal welfare and safety, fear for the well-being of their personal belongings and with, as they will describe for you, an ever-present feeling of terror," Evans said.

"They have lived for over 3 1/2 years in a situation akin to a war zone."

The Ontario Superior Court issued an injunction in March 2006 ordering the protesters to stop interfering with construction on the site. The provincial police raided the site one month later, with about 180 officers, and arrested about 16 people, but the protesters amassed and the police were overrun and forced to retreat.

The province of Ontario purchased the land in July 2006 for $12.3 million, which makes it responsible for the actions of people on its property, Evans said.

The statement of claim also lists other alleged unlawful behaviour by the protesters that police did not act upon or intervene in, including an assault on a Waterloo Region Record reporter, the destruction of a young Hydro One employee's vehicle, a swarming of an elderly man and woman during which he had a heart attack and an attack on a CH television cameraman.

A lawyer for the Crown was to make an opening statement Friday.