Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Smoking Now Abrogates Contractual Obligations

Smoking Now Abrogates Contractual Obligations

Jury finds heavy smoking to be grounds for eviction:

In a case that tobacco law specialists say is one of the first of its kind in the nation, a Boston Housing Court jury ruled that a South Boston couple could be evicted from their rented water-view loft for heavy smoking, even though smoking was allowed in their lease.

The landlord who rented the Sleeper Street unit to Erin Carey and Ted Baar ordered them out within a week last November, after neighbors complained of the smoke odors filtering into their apartments.

Carey and Baar, who each smoke about a pack a day and run an information technology sales business out of the one-bedroom unit, fought the eviction, arguing in court that the converted warehouse's shoddy construction and aging ventilation system were to blame for the wayward odors.

Last Friday, a jury ruled in favor of the landlord and the eviction. Even though the landlord could have written a nonsmoking clause into the lease and didn't, the jury found that the couple's heavy smoking violated a more general clause banning ''any nuisance; any offensive noise, odor or fumes; or any hazard to health."

Beware the word any within your contracts.

Of course, this is not so much a smoker's rights issue as an issue for all of us. Within any of the standard contracts that govern our rights--from the terms of use for our Web hosts, to the service contracts for ISPs or cellular phones, and into the terms of our leases or mortgages, any number of the clauses are written to make the big corporation with the shrewd attorneys and uninformed, gloss-overish salespeople who only want you to sign the standard contract so they can get their commissions. Those corporations won't renegotiate the finer points with you because you, individual customer, are not worth the trouble.

But when someone wants to cut you out, revoke your lease, or foreclose upon you, they rely upon these nebulous things within the contract stacked against you to do so.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:38 AM