Posted on 04/06/2008 7:20:30 PM PDT by lastchance
Do you smoke? Well, you better be careful where. I don't smoke, and I don't like the smell, but what some people are doing to smokers makes me say give me a break.
For the last 12 years, Galila Huff has owned Caffé la Fenicé, a restaurant serving Italian food on the Upper West Side of New York City.
Smoking there is forbidden. New York state bans it in all restaurants and bars.
Huff's apartment is a few blocks away at The Ansonia, an ornate turn-of-the-century building that both Babe Ruth and Arturo Toscanini once called home.
Huff lives there alone except for her Chihuahua, and her cigarettes. For 40 years, she's smoked a pack or two a day.
But then in October, she got a letter from her neighbors. It said, "Dear Resident, immediately cease smoking in your apartment, unless and until you take adequate steps to properly ventilate your smoke out of your apartment such that none enters the common hallway."
Huff couldn't believe it. First she can't smoke in her own restaurant, now she can't smoke in her own apartment?
"I mean the cigarettes smell, yeah. But I'm not puffing into their faces," she said.
The complainants -- Jonathan and Jenny Selbin -- wouldn't agree to a television interview, but they did file a lawsuit against Huff, saying she is "willfully, intentionally, recklessly and/or negligently endangering the health of plaintiffs and their 4-year-old son. & As evidenced by her refusal to address the grave danger posed to the health of a small child, despite repeated requests and warnings, defendant's conduct is actuated by evil and/or reprehensible motives."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
That’s in Mindinao, very far from anywhere I would live.
Talk about crappy neighbors.
Listen, you have to give adults a place where they can be adults. You don’t have to have every place, do you? Enough already. There’s room for most of us to be happy.
“Restaurants, while in public, are privately owned and it should be the decision of the owner whether to allow smoking, not the government’s. Potential customers can decide whether they want to eat there or not.”
Wish more thinking adults saw it that way.
You’d love it here in Ohio where even PRIVATE CLUBS ARE ILLEAGAL. There’s also a sign posted at every public facility with a phone number to the State for reporting your fellow citizen.
It has nothing to do with happiness, adulthood, health or even smoke.
It has to do with power and control.
The point was, the “superlawyer” power couple threatened to ruin the lady just by suing her to death, pointing out that they could do this for free on their own time.
A$$holes like that deserve to be (redacted).
So you think it’s OK to tell someone who OWNS a restaurant how to run his business? I don’t like smoke, so I would eat in a non-smoking restaurant, but there are people who enjoy smoking. It should be left up to the business owner whether to allow smoking, not the nanny state.
Partner, huh? Even the partners that I work with wouldn’t do this (at least I don’t think so). And I thought Sir Eric and I were nerds.
He is threatening dire consequences against a mouse while ignoring the buffalo stampede outside his window.
Big tough guy, he is.
He attended Harvard, I see. At least the Harvard grad partners that I work with have a little class.
Report rape? Nah. Report a murder? Nah. Report burglary or theft? Nah. Report smokers? Ve must crush zee evil zmokers, comrades! It is for zee greater good!
I’d like to parachute him into Waziristan.
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