You obviously live in a single family house.

Our neighbors chain smoke and our hallway also smells like a casino. Smoking in the privacy of one's home is one thing. Said smoke leaking out into the hallway of a shared building and into your neighbors apartments is another. It's in most building by-laws that no smells should be emitted from the apartments within. Of course cooking smells can tend to leach out and there have been a few stinky fish dinners that could have brought on litigation, but the fact is they're not going to kill anyone. When your neighbor's second hand smoke fills the hallway and comes into your home then your own rights are being violated.

An apartment isn't really your own property though.  You're renting it, so a landlord could very easily tell you that you can't smoke in it.

We live in a Baltimore rowhome and when our neighbors moved out, they hired a contractor to fix up their bathroom before they sold the house.  The contractor smoked like a chimney and the smoke made its way into MY bathroom.  These houses are over 100 years old and full of holes.  Cigarette smoke gives me migraines, so I called our former neighbor and asked him to ask his contractor to smoke elsewhere, where it wouldn't make my house reek.

I'd never thought of it before.  We live in a 24 unit building and I've never noticed the smell of cigarette smoke.  Either my neighbors are uncharacteristically healthy for Chicagoans, or somebody did something right when they put this building up.

For the record, it would piss me off if I could smell cigarette smoke all the time. Nothing makes me want one more than smelling one.

I wouldn't sue, but I'd sure as hell complain- to the neighbor, and then to the landlord, if necessary.

Around Portland we have smoking and non-smoking apartment buildings.  Since we don't smoke, we obviously rented a non-smoking apartment.  If we got stuck with a smoking building, I would hate it, but not feel that I had any grounds to complain if I did smell cigarettes.  I guess I just assumed most cities worked this way.

That being said, we recently had a college classroom put in the commercial space below our apartment.  After class, especially if it's raining, students huddle in my doorway (we have a separate outside entrance) smoking cigarettes. I've taken to sneaking to the door and opening it as fast as I can, thereby hitting the offending smoker with my door.  Lots of fun and quicker than litigation.

Just to clarify, the Ansonia is a chi-chi co-op building in Manhattan. In a co-op you don't technically own your apartment, even though you do "own" it -- you purchase shares in the co-op equivalent to the value of your apartment. I own my condo and while there are lots of buildings with no pets policies, I haven't heard of many non-smoking residences. It's kind of a roll of the dice here. We're not going to sue, but our condo board and management company are going to try to sort this out.

It's also worth noting that the couple who sued are both litigators.

Interesting article.

Some cities in California have moved to pass local ordinances that would ban smoking in apartments. Calabasas, Belmont and now Oxnard all have legislation in motion to restrict smoking in multifamily homes.

I had written a blog article about how landlords are gravitating towards restricting smoking in their apartments and as determined my demand.

www.mynewplace.com/.../clearing-the-air-smoke-free-apartments