Did you read today’s Boston Gobe opinion page? If not, you might find the excerpts below interesting.
I am writing in regard to the case of the condo owner who lost her suit over second-hand smoke making her asthma worse. When my husband and I were looking at a house in Lexington, I kept telling the realtor that I smelled smoke. He assured me it was coming from a gentleman who had just left who had the smell of smoke on his coat. We went from room to room, and when we reached the kitchen, I almost fell over. The owner (who is usually not present at a showing) was sitting at her table smoking a cigarette. The realtor must have known that his client was there, but chose to bend the truth, as it were. My husband and I quickly left, laughing our heads off.
The defendant should have gone with her hunch about the smoke she detected, checked the surrounding condos for resident smokers, and then made her decision to buy based on real fact, not the fiction she said the realtor was feeding her. I am surprised she spent nearly two years compromising her health the way she did.
Ruth Minden
Belmont
Below is one of the responses to the above Boston Globe opinion reader:
Yeah, a woman moves into a condo in a crowded city neighborhood, filled with cars, trucks and even trains, all within breathing distance, and gets her panties all in a bunch because some guy is smoking in his own apartment.
…Try sucking a tailpipe sometime, let me know how quick you drop. Then explain to me why that “second hand exhaust” isn’t the big hot issue that secondhand smoke is.
