Court rules man can't smoke inside his own home
A Washington, D.C. man is barred by court order from smoking in his own home — at least temporarily. Edwin Gray's row house, which his family has owned for 50 years, apparently isn't entirely airtight in its basement, so some smoke seeped through into the neighbors' living space.
Gray and his family intend to fight the temporary injunction, and they worry about the precedent the decision has set. "If this judge has done this, who will be next? What other neighbor will be next?" asked his sister, Mozella Johnson.
Others support the decision's potential impact. "I think it's an excellent precedent to start, so people can realize you can't just ignore your neighbor," said local real estate lawyer Benny Kass. "Your home is no longer your castle."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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