Anti-smoking activists are crowing over a ruling upholding a Boston landlord’s eviction of tenants for smoking within a rented condominium unit. The court’s ruling itself was not necessarily unreasonable, since other residents had complained about the tenants’ habit and the landlord said he was facing condominium association fines of $75/day if he let it persist. Note, however, the following passage:
In the face of an increasing number of nonsmoking tenants who are willing to assert their rights in multiple-unit dwellings, a growing number of property owners will choose to make their apartments and condos smoke-free, said [landlord Neil] Harwood’s attorney, Peter Brooks, a partner in the Boston office of Chicago’s Seyfarth Shaw.
A new issue is the liability of landlords for allowing smoking in their building and the additional risks they face, Brooks said.
“Those who want to avoid it will turn nonsmoking, not just in an eviction case, but a case against a landlord brought by a nonsmoking tenant.”
And of course GWU lawprof and perennial antipode of this site John Banzhaf gets his say:
“Ten years ago, most people would assume that smoking in one’s own abode — their apartment or condo — would be protected and nothing could be done about it, like the ‘old man in his castle’ idea,” Banzhaf said.
But that concept has been eroded by several cases, Banzhaf noted, including orders prohibiting parents from smoking around their children or foster children, and court rulings that secondhand smoke entering one’s home is actionable if it adversely affects others.
(Stefanie Shaffer, “Mass. Court Upholds Eviction of Condo Tenants for Smoking”, National Law Journal, Jul. 8).
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