Steamed About Smoking
An apparently sensitive Centerville couple recently has upped the ante in anti-smoking agitation and zeal by suing a neighbor because smoke from his morning cigarette allegedly offends their olfactory organs and sensibilities.
Matthew and Amanda Parrish filed their lawsuit in Utah's 2nd District Court. Named as defendants are neighbor Douglas MacFarlane and the Cedar Springs condominium complex, where all of the parties reside.
Legal experts say the Parrish suit is the first in Utah to challenge the right of someone to smoke in her or his own home. If true, it is an odious, not honorific, distinction.
There is an irrationality about this case. The Parrishes live two floors above MacFarlane, whose more immediate non-smoking neighbor has noticed no problem with his second-hand smoke, raising a question about whether the problem and its alleged severity are being exaggerated.
Given the presumably heightened olfactory sensibilities of the Parrishes, one would think they would opt to make their home in a facility where no smoking is allowed. The couple says MacFarlane's smoking has been a problem since they took up residence last fall.
In fact, the Parrish complaint is not dissimilar to that of urban-reared yuppies moving into a new subdivision carved out of agriculural land and then whining about the odors of livestock kept by neighbors who have spurned or not yet discovered the benefits of Utah's latest cash crop -- subdivisions.
This lawsuit is bereft of merit. It is inimical to property and privacy rights, opens the door and promotes the notion of a police state where the loudest or the most wily can dictate how others should live every facet, no matter how minor or personal, of their daily lives.
It is a further abuse of the judicial system. Instead of being a forum to redress legitimate grievances, suits like this would have the courts become a social arbiter as well as a redistributor of wealth second only to that of modern government itself.
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