From The New York Times:

[ronin]

February 9, 2008
Suing the Smoker Next Door
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Offices and restaurants have become no-smoking zones in New York City. But Galila Huff, a chain-smoking restaurateur from the Upper West Side, always thought that when it came to smoking, her apartment was her sanctuary.

But perhaps it is no longer.

Her neighbors, Jonathan Selbin, a class-action lawyer who has honed his skills suing major corporations, and his wife, Jenny Selbin, also a lawyer, are irate over the cigarette smoke that they say seeps from Ms. Huff’s apartment into the common hallway of their building, the elegant Beaux-Arts Ansonia, on Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets.

Her smoking, they say, makes the hallway smell like “a Las Vegas casino,” and the secondhand smoke is jeopardizing the health of their 4-year-old son, Charlie.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, they are demanding that she “cease and desist from causing smoke to enter into the common hallway,” and that she pay punitive damages. Ms. Huff, 57, an effusive woman with auburn bangs and a ponytail, said in an interview on Friday that she was doing everything she could to control the smoke.

She has been smoking since she was 17, she said, and has always thought of it as a social habit.

She loves children and animals, she says — she owns a Chihuahua named Bobo, whom she dresses in tiny T-shirts — and would never do anything to hurt them. What her neighbors fail to understand, she said, is that she would like to quit and is racked with guilt over her inability to do so.

“They are hysterical,” Ms. Huff said of the Selbins. “I can’t take it. You see, I’m not into harming anyone. I have my conscience also. I have my own war with myself about the cigarette.”

She said she had considered selling her apartment and moving elsewhere because of pressure from the Selbins. She even offered, in writing, to sell it to them — hesitating only because she and her business partner just recently renovated Caffe La Fenice, their classic Italian restaurant near the Ansonia.

“You become a monster all of a sudden because you’re a smoker,” she said.

Ms. Huff has lived in her condominium for 15 years. She sees the dispute with her next-door neighbors, who bought their apartment five years ago, as a morality tale about the changes in Manhattan, a battle between old guard and new, between the funky, live-and-let-live neighborhood she remembers and what she sees as glossy newcomers who expect perfection.

“People, ah, they’re so snobbish,” Ms. Huff said.

The Selbins, both 40, see the dispute in simpler terms.

“One of the reasons that we chose to live in the Ansonia is that it’s a glorious old building with a glorious history,” Mr. Selbin said. “I’m all for the old guard. I have no issue with her except for one, which is that her smoke comes into the common hallway and my son breathes it.”

Ms. Huff said she had tried to suppress the smoke. Giving a tour of her fourth-floor one-bedroom condo on Friday — dressed in a three-piece black leather pantsuit and puffing on a Parliament — she pointed to her two Oreck XL air purifiers, double the number the manufacturer recommends for her 635-square-foot apartment.

Two of the windows were opened for ventilation on Friday, and she had sealed the bottom of every door with rolled-up rugs.

Mr. Selbin, who has not seen the air purifiers, has demanded to see receipts to prove that they exist (Ms. Huff has refused). He said that the smoke in the hallway worsened when the weather was cold, and that Ms. Huff must be shutting the windows then.

For years, the Ansonia has had a reputation as a litigious building. Just last October, another couple, Alan Arkin, a lawyer, and Suzanne Bagert, a financial consultant, sued the building’s management. They said their apartment had become home to “a horrific plague of roaches.”

Mr. Arkin said on Friday that the fumigation of an apartment next door had gotten rid of the roaches, for now, but that they were still seeking damages.

On the fourth floor, the fight has become, well, dirty. Mr. Selbin accuses Ms. Huff of encouraging Bobo the Chihuahua to urinate outside their door and on Charlie’s stroller while it is parked in the hallway.

“She snaps at my wife and calls her Miss America,” Mr. Selbin said.

Mr. Selbin, a Harvard-educated lawyer, says the lawsuit against Ms. Huff, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is not personal. He said he had never considered offering to help Ms. Huff stop smoking because that was not the point.

“This isn’t about her stopping smoking,” he said on Friday. “I know that sounds cold of me. I would never presume to tell her what to do in that way. She has every right to do what she wants, as long as it doesn’t affect us.”

He did not sue the building’s management, he said, because it has been cooperative, even paying to seal off ducts in Ms. Huff’s apartment that could have been spreading the smoke.

As for her offer to sell her apartment to him, he said his three-bedroom, three-bath apartment was big enough.

Robin Stein contributed reporting.

[TommyBB]

Attorney at Law
Harvard educated.

[ronin]

Originally Posted by TommyBB

Attorney at Law
Harvard educated.

That equates out to ASSHOLE

[TommyBB]

Damn, Steve.
I actually typed that out, and then refined it a bit, before I edited it all out.

[ronin]

Just calling like it is.

[Stevo]

Originally Posted by ronin

That equates out to ASSHOLE

Well that's open minded...

I have actually have two friends who have graduated Harvard Law, only one of them is an ass...

[daggo66]

There you have it. 50% of the people who graduate from Harvard Law are assholes!

[daggo66]

This couple clearly is not interested in a solution, only in suing someone.

[TommyBB]

I concur. That and the publicity.

[PCaponi]

Originally Posted by TommyBB

I concur. That and the publicity.

Definetly the "free" publicity.