Odd Judge Judy case re:smoking

applecruncher

applecruncher

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Ohio USA
I was watching Judge Judy earlier and one of the cases surprised me:

Plaintiff was a woman who rented a room in defendant's (non-smoking) house, and she was suing to get her $850 security deposit back after living there only 2 months. The signed lease agreement specified No Smoking. Plaintiff said she never smoked in the house, but she found out that her visiting daughter had smoked 1 cigarette in the room. Landlord demanded that tenant leave. After she moved he got an estimate in writing for $810 to deodorize the room.

Huh? :cautious: That seems excessive for deodorizing a room where 1 cigarette was smoked.
(Even IF the plaintiff herself had sneaked and smoked several cigarettes a day in the room over the course of 2 months $810 deodorizing fee would be excessive imo.)

But JJ (a former long-time smoker) said she didn't believe that the daughter only smoked 1 cigarette. She told plaintiff the No Smoking rule was broken and only awarded her $40 ($850 minus the $810 cleaning/deodorizing fee). Plaintiff also claimed harassment but JJ blew her off.

Here's some interesting Judge Judy factoids:

https://www.lawfuel.com/blog/judge-judy/
Her close friendship with Samuel L. Jackson:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/samu...-besties-for-years_n_5ab11f0fe4b0eb3e2b30c2dc
 

Last edited:
applecruncher said:
After she moved he got an estimate in writing for $810 to deodorize the room.
Click to expand...
If I was the renter, I'd get a couple more (bona fide) estimates.
For nothing else, to know the owner's estimate was or wasn't excessive.
But, I woulda done that before I went to court, and brought that to court with me if $810 proved to be excessive.

Hey, ridding a place of cigarette odor ain't all that incidental.

And I'm with JJ on the 'just one'
 

The judge is smart enough to know that there is no way in hell that a smoker would smoke only one cigarette. That's like saying a heroin addict only took heroin once. Any smoker or former smoker knows that.
 
@win231
@Gary O'

I hear ya. But, if I was visiting someone who lived in a no-smoking building I'd step outside or go to my car or take a walk. Daughter HAD to know what the rules were.

And I also feel plaintiff should have gotten a couple estimates.
 
My sister and her husband bought a house a couple of years ago that a heavy smoker (5 PACKS A DAY!) had lived in for years. There was always a very strong deodorizer smell in the house that hid it until they moved in.

First they removed the popcorn ceilings. Didn't work. Then they had the entire house painted with a special paint that is supposed to seal the walls. Thousands of dollars. Didn't work. Then they had all the drywall (cathedral ceiling and all walls) ripped out and replaced and even the hard surface flooring ripped up and replaced. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Finally, the smell was gone. The excellent bargain that the house was was eaten up by the mitigation efforts.

The owner had left the country and was legally out of reach. They thought about going after the realtor, who knew about the odor but were advised that it would be an uphill battle to prove it.

Expensive lesson: If all you can smell is a strong floral deodorizer, it's probably covering up something.
 
As a landlord, I know how difficult it is to deodorize a house, room by room, when a heavy cigarette smoker "blows off" the non-smoking rule, and puffs away. I had to Kilz every wall and ceiling, in this one house, repaint, change out the mini blinds, get new AC filters and room heaters, and wash the ceiling fan blades, of four ceiling fans, with Lysol spray. Yes, this was a five room house, versus the single room on JJ, but it cost me around $4G's to do all of the work, as above, including my labor and supplies. Divide that by five, and the award was reasonable. I kept the tenant's $1500 SD, but didn't go to SC Court because this guy was a loser with (by then) no money. Court would have been a waste of my time.
 
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