Dallas woman fuming over smoking neighbor at complex (Will this ban smoking in apts?)

Source: Dallas Morning News

In an age when smoking has been outlawed in most public places – government buildings, bars and pool halls – a person's home is one of the few places you can puff in peace.

A Dallas woman has filed a lawsuit seeking six figures from a former neighbor and landlord for damage she says was caused by cigarette smoke wafting through adjoining walls of her high-end townhome.

"Smoking is not a right, it's a privilege," said Chris Daniel, a retired nurse. "I'm sorry that people smoke. I think it's foolish, but when it comes into my house and hurts my health and my daughter's health and our belongings, it's a different issue."

The case is being watched by townhouse industry groups across the area....

...."There's nothing in our home that was ready made. I picked out fabrics, everything was custom made and everything was spotless," said Chris Daniel....

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/093009dnmetsmokingfeud.3ed620b.html

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The respirators were a nice touch.

This lady is full of shit.

such as crawl spaces and many also share common venting (not HVAC usually). So it is possible or even likely that the smoke had penetrated her living area.

As such, her case may have merit.

I think I would have demanded that the landlord/homeowner´s association re-route vents upon smelling the first hint of smoke.

You're right. Most HVAC systems are not linked. But some are.

The restrooms of each apartment are generally backed up against each other to cut down on the piping and ductwork, and the grilles which handle restroom exhaust can share a common chase. During periods of inactivity by the exhaust fan (when there is a common fan serving the chase and not one per restroom), smoke can definitely cross from one apartment into the other.

These type designs are less frequent than they used to be, but they do happen from time to time. I can't count the number of times I've seen contractors cut corners using designs such as this, without including backdraft dampers. Add an apathetic code enforcement official who doesn't check it, and suddenly you have two apartments which are linked.

(It's also a fire hazard, but that's a separate issue.)

I hate crawling fires...

Hate them with a passion...

Oh and this just does not happen in the US either.

:hi:

Thanks for the memories....

My apartment was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, and I'm not a smoker. I was grateful when they moved.

The whinny shit heads should have moved.

It is that even though she bought her house and suffered both health and financial damage due to the actions of others, that she should just shut up and slink away?

Does that sum it up.

The smoker moved to another unit in the complex, the hypochondriac didn't.

and why doesn't her apartment complex have a smoking section and a non smoking section? I think the woman is full of shit and is just looking to make an easy buck so she can buy more custom crap.

... into my apartment. This woman is NOT full of shit. The neighbors made my life a living hell, and the landlord wouldn't do anything about it (even though our lease agreement stated the landlord could ask tenants to "refrain from excessive smoking" if it bothered a neighbor). Everything I owned reeked of smoke. The cigarette smoke smell coming into my apartment woke me up at night; when they smoked pot, my bedroom reeked of it. Some apartments are better "sealed" than others (and, therefore, I'm sure the same goes for townhomes).

Think about it: If cooking smells can move from home to home (and many of us have experienced that, right?), then the smoke smell can certainly move the same way. I read a Harvard Medical School study that proved that, if you can smell the smoke, that you are being exposed to (at least) small levels of the toxins in cigarettes.

I moved away nearly 2 years ago, and some of the stuff I put in storage from when I lived there STILL smells like smoke.

But all that said ... perhaps someone needs to figure out where the smoke is coming in, and whether there's a way to fix it for the lady in this story. In my old kleenex-and-spit-walls apartment, there apparently wasn't a way to fix it for the lady in this story. In a high-end townhome, there must be some way to stop this from happening. You take a risk everytime you share walls with someone (that they'll be noisy, that smoke or cooking smells will come in, etc.)

windows and doors?

Not even close.

going to do that... unless someone is blowing smoke directly into an open window.

from neighboring apartments to stop the spread of fires so I doubt it was the the same as your apartment experience.

I smoked for many years and recently quit (I now "vape" on e-cigs, but that's another story) and if you came to me, as my neighbor, and told me you smelled my tobacco smoke I would do everything possible to stop it. I think most smokers today would do the same, or at least I would hope they do.

"A manager and attorney for Estancia Townhomes, a 52-building community near Prestonwood Country Club in North Dallas, said it's unlikely the Daniels sustained any smoke damage. There is a solid, two-hour fire wall from the foundation to the roof between each of the homes.

And even if some smell did seep through, the Daniels renewed their lease at Estancia – where smoking is permitted – six months after they say the problem began.

"Why do people file lawsuits?" asked Ginger Tye, an attorney representing the property managers and owners. "They're asking for money damages."

My husband and I smoke OUTSIDE of our home - on either the back deck or the covered side porch when it rains. We're RIGHT NEXT TO THE HOUSE and our home does NOT smell of smoke. My son, who is 10, does not smoke and he would be able to tell if it smelled, as well. It doesn't.

Despite being a smoker, I still have a keen nose and can tell if the house or my clothes smell of it. I HAVE smelled smoke in my house, but only if a huge tuft of wind happens to blow the smoke into my house while I'm inside and my husband is outside.

Other than that - which is fairly infrequent - we never smell it and our house was built in 1940. Granted it's brick with a Pella sliding glass door, but it's still older.

I'm still waiting to see what the next complaint will be now that companies are offering smokeless cigarettes. I contend it's a "nanny state" complaint and NOT the smoke that really bothers people.

Pollution causes more allergies, asthma and breathing problems than someone smoking next door.

:eyes:

in lieu of exterior entrances, odors and smoke can definitely migrate from one apartment to the other via the hallway. Generally this occurs when someone is cooking/smoking, and the neighbor has a kitchen exhaust fan or restroom exhaust fan running. It will suck the particulate from the offending apartment under the front door, down the hall, and into the other space.

A solution can be to introduce outside air (treated, preferably) directly into the hallway so that a positive pressure keeps odors in the space where they originated.

as that was us at the last place we lived with paper walls and a heavy smoking neighbor.

The smell was vile enough alone but coupled with the dizziness that ensued it made living there a hell.

It would wake us up at night, forcing us to throw open all our windows even in the middle of winter (Bay Area winter but still). And that only helped somewhat.

Our clothes and hair reeked of it to the point where our co-workers inquired when we had taken up smoking.

they're just overpriced and painted beige to look "upscale".

but this is ridiculous.

That is what happens when a nation goes rampant on one bad habit... Stay tuned, others are sure to follow... I hear taxing of soft drinks and juice is next and who knows after that...

for a BS lawsuit.

is just the beginning, as cigs go up people stop buying them, they have to go somewhere for that lost revenue.

:)

Maybe, it is actually a cheap-assed, overpriced townhome which she'd be better off moving out of before the place starts falling apart.

I live in an apartment building built in the 20s. If someone upstairs, or downstairs, in in an adjoining apartment is smoking I know nothing of it unless that person and I both have our windows open.

The construction did not normally contain nearly as many common areas. Even shared walls were often 2 framed walls that were only lathe and plastered on the expsed sides.

Today it is normal to have a single common wall as well as shared spaces like crawlspaces, attic space and most importantly, venting. This is not a case of crazy, so perhaps some of us should refrain from blaming the victim.

I lived in a townhome once, and my attic was not shared. That is inviting burglars. There are suppose to be fire walls between the units as well.

nt

Most of the "yuppie projects" townhomes built in the 80s, 90s, and 00s are built out of crap.

I used to live in an old house that had one of those complexes built right next door while I was living there. Two years later, I could already see rust, mold, and siding starting to rot off. Can't imagine what it was like with that cheap Chinese-made drywall.

I know for a fact that older buildings around here (Chicago - 1880s to 1930s) have better soundproofing. It's only in the places that have been "gut-rehabbed" and replaced with cheap junk that I've had to wear earplugs to not be kept awake by neighbors snoring and fucking. (And what would I say to them if I was the complaining kind? Don't sleep? Don't have a sex life? I don't think so.)

boiling cabbage in apartment buildings. I lived in an apartment where I swear the lady next door lived on fucking boiled cabbage. It filled the halls and stairwell, made me gag everytime I had to go leave.

:P

what chitlins are. Don't think they make them in Quebec. heheh

And they taste as bad as they smell, maybe worse. I tried them once... I imagine sucking on a pigs butt tastes pretty much the same. Nasty, nasty stuff.

People eat some weird shit. no pun intended.

There is supposed to be a firewall between units.

the homes.

And even if some smell did seep through, the Daniels renewed their lease at Estancia – where smoking is permitted – six months after they say the problem began. "

In some areas in multi unit dwellings only every other unit needs a firewall. I learned this the hard way when our neighbor busted a hole through the wall doing some "repairs" (his words I have no fracking clue what he was doing).

I called the apt complex and a contractor and learned from both the code only requires a firewall every second unit.

My ascii art (top view)
| unit 1 [] unit 2 | unit 3 [] unit 4 |

| = normal wall
[] = firewall.

So in our instance we were unit 2 and we had a firewall between us & #1 but a normal wall between us and #3.

or just speaking from your nether-regions?

I know that comment wasn't directed at me but...

"Are you an expert on *local* building codes "

Local codes can not be less than the national fire codes. They can be tougher, but the national codes set the minimum fire protection for homes and buildings.

Sure there has to be a firewall, but do you really know what a fire wall is? All it does is prevent fire from spreading from one space to another. In a town home situation that normally means either a 1 hour wall (with fire suppression system) or a two hour fire wall. All that means is they have to add more gyp board (thickness) to the wall, there is nothing that really will be put in place to stop smoke. That being said, smoke isn't going to really be spread via the walls, where you will usually have smoke come from is the main entry doors or from the HVAC system if the units share a main return duct.

Maybe all cooking in apartments needs to be banned too.

What if someone is a vegetarian and they are forced to breathe the cooking aromas of meat?

:rofl:

A nearby condo sold for about $75,000 less than it might have because the owners had been such heavy smokers. The place had to be gutted.

It's one of the standard deficiencies they look for.

duplex where the landlord "remodeled".

The offending smoker moved to another unit in June and she's claiming she still needs to wear a respirator to go into the townhouse.

What a charlatan. Seems like they're getting some traction towards getting a bigger payout, hence the theatrics. What a load!

i call bullshit on stuff like that.

Standing at a bus stop with a cig in my hand that is unlit and a woman goes into coughing spasms, pointing at me and yelling that my smoke is making her sick. LOL, when I showed her the cig wasn't lit she slinked away and stopped coughing immediately.

even if I'm standing 30' away downwind. I try to be a considerate smoker. I don't throw my butts down and don't smoke in the presence of non-smokers but there are still some people who like to demonstrate their "moral superiority" by making such scenes.

I would've had some "interesting" words for her. :)

I like it when I see people like this who raise hell when their health and material goods are threatened. To top it off, these two have a flair for the drama. True, they have not engendered any sympathy for themselves but that probably wasn't their goal to start with. What they have done is embarrass the hell out of the housing complex. Bad publicity with the biggest percentage of the population: most people don't smoke.

I see most of the sympathies on this board are with the r-w dolts who also complained about them at the newspaper web site. It seems if anyone stands up for human dignity, that person is a whiner, a crybaby, and a schmuck. Many of the posters here seem to think these two should just buck it up, smell the smoke, and smile about it. And never mind the custom-made upholstery that will smell until hell freezes over. It's only money, time, creativity, and effort put into making one's home a pleasurable place to be.

The nerve of them--having custom-made upholstery! That makes them "the other" right there!

I once lived in a town home that some might consider the upper end of the spectrum. My neighbor, a lawyer, smoked and it came right in my townhouse. I complained and she reserved her smoking for the back terrace. Pretty soon she quit altogether.

A few months after she completely quit, I got a knock at the door and it was one of her teenage kids, who invited me to a "Mom Quit Smoking Party." The kid hugged me and thanked me for "saving his mother's life." I went to the party and was again thanked for complaining, this time by all her children (four). In addition, at the end of the party, two attendees said they were going to quit as they were inspired by her experience.

Not all complaining has to come to a bad end.


Cher

in their own homes. Just wait until MJ is legalized.

You must save the children of the world from inhaling the carginogens you are spewing into the air.

Wouldn't want to mess up your record of "saving lives!"

I am a smoker, and the apartment complex I live in does allow both smoking and pets. I share walls with two neighbors, and from what I've seen everyone in our building smokes. I am a reasonably polite smoker -- I never smoke in other people's homes unless they invite me to do so, I never smoke in front of other people's children even if their parents are smokers themselves. I don't smoke in my car if I have a passenger who is a nonsmoker. When I lived with a nonsmoker, I smoked outside only. But if my rental agreement allowed me to smoke in my apartment, I would be upset if my neighbor told me not to -- I would be willing to consider moving to another unit where I didn't share a wall with them, but I chose this complex because they did allow smoking.

My one experience with a landlord not ensuring his building was a habitable place was when I was a child and my mother moved us into a trailer. It was August, in Arkansas, and a week after we moved in the AC went out. We were in a heat wave, trailers might as well be ovens insofar as retention of heat, and the landlord did not fix the air conditioning -- the second day I had to be taken to the ER for heat stroke even with all of the doors and windows open, and Mom sent me to live with my grandparents "until the AC was fixed". When the landlord didn't fix it after a week, Mom had a consultation with an attorney, then talked to the landlord. Since she was able to say she was represented by a lawyer, the landlord agreed to terminate her lease without the penalties listed in the lease for early termination. He also pro-rated the rent that was paid, giving her back 3/4 of the rent for that month, as there had been only one week that we had been able to actually live there. But Mom wasn't about to sit on her hands for months on end waiting for him to make the trailer livable.

If it so severely impacted their health that they had to use respirators, why did they stay there a year?

As much as I feel for anyone who is suffering health problems from their environment, the doctrine of laches would likely apply in this case. They allowed their very expensive things to remain exposed to smoke for a year. They even renewed their lease despite the circumstances. I understand not wanting the inconvenience of having to move, and I can understand wanting to try to let the landlord remedy the situation, but a year? Really?

One other thing.... did they have renters insurance? Smoke damage is considered a covered peril in most renters insurance policies. Then again, the insurance company might have decided laches applied as well -- that they did not make a significant enough of an effort to stop the loss as they allowed their possessions to remain in the smoky environment after they knew of the peril.

going into his. I run air purifiers btw and recommended to him if it was that bad, to get one for his basement. He called management to complain and they sent an environmental engineer over and it seems that there is a gap between adjacent walls in the basement area and they can be sealed up by my neighbor.

I thought that I'd get a lecture from the engineer, but no, he had been a smoker and he said that these things happen and no one is to blame.

So far, there are no laws yet in my county about smoking in ones home.

where the wall meets the floor joists, there is a gap that is required to be infilled. If it isn't, I can see how smoke would travel to the other basement. That being said, it would be up to the landlord to fix that as there does needs to be a 2 hour rating on common walls in condos/townhouses (unless the place is grandfathered into the old code).

IBC is the national code. If there is an air gap between the walls, you do not want to fill it. It is there as part of the fire separation wall composite.

I'm not allowed to smoke indoors, but every apartment has a balcony that can be used for smoking. It's odd, if you ask me.

...but that's only because I don't like the smell of smoke permiating my place. I prefer to smoke on my balcony.

To not be able to breathe smoke free air in your own home because your neighbor is stinking up the place just sucks (or blows).

I know it's a complex issue with competing interests, but cigarette smoke reeks to high heaven. One time I was upstairs in my home and an smoker electrician came in downstairs. He wasn't smoking at the time, but his clothes and hair reeked so much it wafted upstairs in no time and I had to open windows up there. Amazing how powerful that stench is.

but this is stupid. If smoke is coming through the walls, then sue your builder for a bad product. What one does in ones own home, is for them to decide.

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I am always hearing about people who claim to be allergic to cigarette smoke but there is no evidence that cigarette smoke is an allergen. It is an irritant that can aggravate some respiratory conditions but so are many perfumes, colognes, air fresheners, etc...
I am in favor of keeping the environment as safe and clean as possible but I think smokers have been targeted excessively. I was in a seminar, some years ago, conducted by a man who compiled most of the original data on the dangers of 2nd hand smoke. He stated, flat out, that most of what he was now hearing from government and other sources about 2nd hand smoke was way overblown from what his research showed. He said, essentially, that the only real people at risk from 2nd hand smoke are children growing up in homes where people smoke. Someone in the audience asked about people who are allergic to smoke and he replied there is no such thing, that cigarette smoke is an irritant but not any worse than other irritants to people with respiratory problems. As for the problems the women in the article were reporting, I have to echo an earlier reply to this post that all her custom fabrics, etc... were possibly the source of those problems. I know I have seen some horrible cases of pulmonary fibrosis brought on by new carpet-condition was disabling and irreversible. I know smoking stinks but so do a lot of things that no one plans to outlaw.

Your breathing related problems in detail. And how different is an asthma attack triggered by smoke, perfumes, fragrances, etc. from an actual allergy attack? They both can make people sick.

I am one of those people and due to my sensitivity to those substances among others, for many many years I restricted my exposure to other human beings. Inevitably in a crowd there would be someone who had recently smoked, who was wearing a fragrance, or who had washed their clothes or hands with a detergent or soap that triggered an asthma attack or a sneezing fit. Only since the development of allergy medications such as Zyrtec have I been able to spend time in groups for the first time since I was eleven years old.

My husband grew up with severe asthma which strangely completely cleared up once he no longer lived with his chain smoking mother. She is not allowed to smoke in our house and in fact has only visited a very few times in the 30+ years we have been married since we tend to get adverse reactions just being around her with her smelly clothes.

You are correct about her fabrics and other household decor - those can also cause a serious reaction if they are new. We recently built a new house and I had to limit what materials were used since I react to vinyl, carpet, and a lot of other building products. It took several years of research to select the materials for the house that would allow me to live it in once it was complete. One of the difficulties is even visiting the show rooms that sell the products since I'd start wheezing in short amounts of time. Thank goodness for the internet!

and I smoke. People with reactive airway disorders are sensitive to a range of substances and we are all different. In fact, I started smoking at 12 and did not have another asthma attack until I was 45. Something to do with the smooth muscle relaxation that nicotine causes, according to my doctor. I react to the fumes of chlorine bleach which is used in many places for cleaning. My point, however, is not that there aren't some people sensitive to smoke but that there are people sensitive to a lot of substances in common use out there and no one has gone on a jihad against wearers of perfume and cologne or those who clean with bleach. One of the worst cases of airway restriction I ever witnessed was a nurse I was working with who walked into a teenage patient's room who had just sprayed on cologne. I had to rush her to the adult hospital next door and it took 2 epi shots to get her opened up. I have never seen a case of pulmonary fibrosis caused by 2nd hand smoke but I have seen it caused by carpets and other materials used in buildings. Still, I see no one calling for a ban on these materials. And I see no one suggesting we tax people into oblivion for using these substances and materials. I do believe smokers have become a politically acceptable scapegoat for a world of probems that are multi-faceted. I am a very considerate smoker and do not smoke around non-smokers. But I see, in this article, the woman in question renewed her lease and refused offers of another unit. I believe it was not her intention to resolve the situation but, rather, to vent her self-righteous rage against someone engaging in a behavior of which she did not approve. Oh, and to score financially off her temper tantrum.

they have every right to sue. My neighbor smokes and it comes through the vent in our apartment. It really sucks. Also, the people living in the apartment above us smoke on their balcony and the smoke drifts right into our unit. It's fucking infuriating. Hopefully, soon, they will ban smoking on balcony's because it is a public health hazard to those arond you.

If you want to smoke, then go outside the building at least 20ft from any entrance.

It seems like these two are just looking for a way to cash in... c'mon, respirators?! If it bothered them that much they shouldn't have renewed their lease or they could have moved. I'm sure there are plenty of places to choose from in Dallas!

If the smoke from next door was causing their carpets and upholstery to smell, there was some defect in the construction.

home. WTF???

And the woman and her daughter claim they still need the masks and goggles??????

to sniff out stuff when dogs aren't available.