This recent news item flipped my sense of injustice/justice button. I read a news report about an elderly woman who lives in New York City. This woman’s name is Galila Huff and she is a smoker. She owns a restaurant in town; but, she isn’t allowed to smoke there because state law forbids smoking in restaurants or bars.
Ms Huff has lived in her apartment for 15 years which is a few blocks away from her restaurant. She has smoked in her apartment for years with no problems. It is her personal place of residence. The problem started about 5 years or so ago when new neighbors moved into her building. They allegedly started complaining about smelling smoke in the communal hallway.
Ms Huff made attempts to contain the smoke in her personal living space; after she was made aware of the situation by a letter from her neighbors. She had the walls of her apartment insulated, she tried to quit smoking…and wasn’t successful, she purchased four large air purifiers, she had the airducts sealed, improved the windows, and still the neighbors complained about the smell of smoke.
The neighbors allegedly filed a lawsuit. They first sent her a letter telling her to quit smoking IN HER APARTMENT until such a time that she could ventilate the smoke away from the hallway outside of her door. For the record, the neighbors are each lawyers. They have a small child. They claim that the smoke in the hallway endangers their health and that of their child.
Since they moved into the apartment, long after Ms Huff established the apartment building as her residence, you would think they would have noticed the smell when they were considering moving into the building.
Regardless, i am not a huge fan of cigarette smoke. I am myself allergic to it. But, this legal fight seems a bit over the top to me. I mean it would be different, i think, had Ms. Huff not taken some corrective actions to reduce the amount of smoke that could be released into the hallway.
She didn’t ignore their request. Doesn’t she have a right to smoke in her home? Certainly, i can understand their right to a smoke free environment; but, since Ms. Huff did take action if they still felt that an excess amount of smoke was entering the hallway endangering them …shouldn’t they consider moving themselves? Or perhaps, they could consider installing an air purifier in their own apartment. This i am sure is very stressful for all involved.
I guess, i don’t understand what more they can realistically expect Ms. Huff to do. It seems abusive to me to continue to bully her when she has made an honest attempt to improve the situation.
From what i understand, this shared hallway is like 10 feet wide and a hundred feet long and the neighbor’s doorway is 50 feet approximately away from Ms. Huff’s doorway. Is Ms. Huff legally responsible to do more? I certainly hope not.
I do believe in people respecting each others personal space when smoking…but, i also believe that once she was made aware of the problem, that Ms. Huff truly attempted to correct it. To me, the whole situation is over the top.
Hopefully, the judge who rules on this suit will use a heavy dose of common sense to decide the case. If all is right in the world, the judge will refund any excess court cost incurred by Ms Huff, after she attempted to reticfy the situation, due to the continued legal badgering from her neighbors. That would balance things a bit i think.
Write where you are 