Tobacco.org

• Suit over secondhand smoke targets real estate broker 

Alyssa Burrage says she was smoked out of her new $405,000 condominium.

Burrage, a 32-year-old advertising company employee with a history of asthma, had smelled cigarettes when she first visited the bright, parlor-level condo in Boston's South End in 2006 with her real estate broker. But the broker, she alleges, assured her that the owner must be a smoker and the stench would disappear.

After Burrage moved into the Milford Street brick row house, she says, she discovered the secondhand smoke was coming from one of two men living in the condo below. The men and the condo association refused to fix the problem, she adds, and she had to move out.

Today, in what tobacco law specialists call one of the first lawsuits of its kind to go to trial in Massachusetts, a jury is scheduled to decide whether Burrage's real estate broker is liable for damages. . . .

Neither the real estate broker, Joseph DeAngelo, nor his lawyer would comment on the case. In a joint court filing summarizing the case, DeAngelo and his employer, Gibson Sotheby's International Realty, deny that Burrage questioned him about smoke in the condo. . . .

Burrage also sued the two men in the downstairs condominium - Edward J. Allan, who owns the two-story garden-level apartment, and Michael Schofield, the smoker who has lived with Allan for 13 years - and the condominium association. All three defendants settled with Burrage out of court yesterday

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