A Washington woman is suing her neighbor because says the marijuana smoke coming from his apartment has ‘invaded her home’ and is ruining her life.
Josefa Ippolito-Shepherd, 76, is suing the District of Columbia over the smell coming from neighbor Thomas Cackett, 73, which she says has made it hard for her to breathe, sleep and live.
‘I have the right to breathe fresh air in my home,’ Ippolito-Shepherd said.’I’m not talking about if I go to someone else’s house or a place people go to smoke pot. They have the freedom to do whatever. I just do not want to be invaded in my own home.’
Ippolito-Shepherd – who claims she will never move from her home of 30 years – is asking the city to ban smoking in multi-unit buildings.Recreational marijuana is legal in Washington DC, meaning the smoker isn’t committing any criminal offense.
Josefa Ippolito-Shepherd (pictured), 76, is suing the District of Columbia over the smell coming from neighbor Thomas Cackett, 73, which she says has made it hard for her to breathe, sleep and live
Cackett and Angella Farserotu, who rents an accessory apartment in the unit, have both argued that the smell and its affects are not their responsibility.
Ippolito-Shepherd is acting as her own attorney and says she’s prepared to take the case to the highest court necessary.
She believes the marijuana smoke got into her home through the cracks in her stairs, behind a web of pipes that runs under her kitchen sink and above recessed lights from the person living downstairs from her.
The plaintiff has asked the landlord of the place next door to evict Cackett and told him to stop smoking inside.Both have rejected her request.
Because marijuana has been legalized in Washington since 2015, it doesn’t appear she has a legal avenue for her claim.
The chairman of the Washington DC City Council, Phil Mendelson, has said the only way to fix the problem would be to ban marijuana in the city again, which Ippolito-Shepherd claims is not her goal.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in DC, which legalized medical cannabis in 2010 and recreational use in 2015.
Ippolito-Shepherd believes the marijuana smoke got into her home from Cackett’s (pictured) through the cracks in her stairs, behind a web of pipes that runs under her kitchen sink and above recessed lights from the person living downstairs from her
There is precedent, however, with the smell of cigarettes causing legal action to be taken.
In 1976, the state of New Jersey’s superior court ruled in favor of an office worker who sued her employers for letting co-workers smoke at their desks.
Hundreds of lawsuits have followed over tobacco, according to the , but marijuana law – especially given that the drug is not yet legal nationwide – has not been made clear.
Disputes like these could become more common in the future, online marketing as a Gallup poll in 2022 said that more Americans smoke marijuana than cigarettes.
The smell is often a topic of complaint.The Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams : ‘The degree to which Manhattan air is now just saturated with the aroma of marijuana is frankly absurd.’
Brooke Hoots of the CDC said that THC, the main substance in marijuana, has many of the same cancer-causing toxins that can be passed through secondhand smoke.
Cities in California have started potentially outlawing all smoking in apartments and residential buildings.
Dale Gieringer, head of the state’s chapter of pro-decriminalization group NORML, says it’s not that simple.
‘If you are a medical marijuana user – and we have hundreds of thousands of them, actually – you can’t smoke outside your house and in public,’ Gieringer said, ‘and now with these no-smoking ordinances, you can’t smoke in your apartment either.So we’ve been fighting those ordinances.’
Ippolito-Shepherd’s trial, which aims to accomplish a similar ban, will begin this week.
Cackett has yet to comment publicly on the suit. Farserotu said she ‘felt sorry’ for Ippolito-Shepherd.
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox health" data-version="2" id="mol-5b9155d0-9496-11ed-b672-47b5b5ae1a82" website retiree sues city over smell of neighbor's marijuana