
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 4, 1993                   TAG: 9308040179
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MARC DAVIS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                                LENGTH: Medium

COUPLE LOSES TO NEIGHBORS' SMOKE

A couple who claimed cigarette smoke was invading their apartment from an adjacent apartment lost their court battle Tuesday.

After two days of testimony, Circuit Court Judge E. Preston Grissom ruled that David and Pamela Billing did not prove that the landlord had violated their lease.

The Billings claimed cigarette smoke was seeping into their apartment through holes around the bathroom and kitchen pipes adjoining a neighbor's apartment. They claimed the smoke was not only annoying but life-threatening.

"All we wanted from the get-go was for the invasion of a toxic element to stop coming into our apartment," David Billing testified.

The couple claimed the smoke violated their lease, which requires a "fit and habitable" apartment. Judge Grissom, however, said the evidence did not support that claim. He did not elaborate.

The Billings moved into the Ivystone Apartments in 1989 when David enrolled at Regent University Law School.

There was no problem for two years, until smoking neighbors moved next door, they testified. "When I'd walk into my bathroom and gag, it was very upsetting," David Billing testified.

The Billings said they are particularly sensitive to cigarette smoke because Pamela has stress-related asthma, and David's father, grandmother and two uncles had died from cancer.

Pamela Billing said they did not want to move because that would cost too much and they had already decorated their apartment. She also said she and David had bad backs and would have a hard time moving.

In the end, she said, they paid more in legal bills than they would have paid to move.

Barry Koch, a lawyer for the apartment managers, said Taylor Management Inc. did everything possible to stop the smoke, including fixing the holes around the pipes.

After the hole repairs, Koch asked, "What great quantity [of smoke] could possibly get to them? . . . I suspect we have very small trace elements, if any."

Fixing the holes did stop some smoke, David Billing testified, but not all. After the judge's ruling, David Billing said, "We have to move, that's been made clear."

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB