A couple in the tony Ansonia building sued a neighbor for smoking last year and they settled out of court. In 2006, a judge let Manhattan tenants break a lease over secondhand smoke.
Published 00:07, August the 5th, 2009
Neighbor sues over secondhand smoke
Woman with sick child says cigarette smoke comes through vents
A couple in the tony Ansonia building sued a neighbor for smoking last year and they settled out of court. In 2006, a judge let Manhattan tenants break a lease over secondhand smoke.
Most New Yorkers have horror stories of life stacked atop one another — noisy neighbors, nosy neighbors, or messy neighbors who send roaches and bad smells into their apartments.
Christie Ewen’s neighbor is a smoker whose secondhand smoke come through the vents and she’s suing him to make him stop.
“We have to keep the windows open,” Ewen said. “In the winter it’s impossible. In the summer we get mosquitoes.”
Ewen, 38, says her 3-year-old daughter has respiratory problems and cigarette smoke keeps the family up at night in their $2 million Tribeca condo.
“It’s a common complaint, but not a common lawsuit,” said David Kaminsky, a Manhattan real estate lawyer not involved with the case.
The neighbor could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Ewen failed to rally the two-thirds of the 250 apartments she needed to make 200 Chambers Street a smoke-free building.
While apartment life spawns complaints, it has also bred respect for people’s right to behave as they want within the law.
“It’s my domain, my castle,” said smoker Hector Fonseca, 50, of Staten Island. “I should be able to do what I want in private.”
“People can’t play music after 10. You can’t cure fish in your home,” Ewen said. “There are rules.”