New York City Apartment News

The second-hand smoke lawsuit at Ansonia, a condominium on Broadway and 73rd Street, raises an interesting question for co-op boards across the city - should the number of lawyers in the building be limited?

Aside from the obvious issues of dealing with the nuisance of second-hand smoke in co-ops, apartments and condominiums the question now turns to the appropriateness of lawyers’ using their knowledge of the legal system to take on their neighbors.

“It is not unethical [but it is] unneighborly,” Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who specializes in legal ethics told the NY Times.

Landlords may be leery of renting to those in the legal profession, but many co-op and condo boards haven’t had the same worries - at least not until now.

While discrimination on the basis of color, creed, age, race, national origin and some other factors is very much illegal, discrimination against someone because he or she is a member of the legal profession is perfectly legal.

In the case of the Ansonia condominium, the lawyer tenants who sued complained that their neighbor, Galila Huff, had been creating a nuisance by failing to provide adequte ventilation when she smoked thus endangering their small child.

Huff, aptly named, a chain smoker, had said that she tried to respond to their complaints and had even bought air purifiers to reduce the amount of smoke. The lawyers complained that she had failed to provide them with receipts proving that she had made the purchases.

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