Tobacco.org

• Woman loses second-hand smoke case 

A Suffolk County jury yesterday rejected a Boston woman's suit contending that her real estate broker misled her by concealing that a downstairs neighbor smoked cigarettes, in one of the first such lawsuits to go to trial in Massachusetts.

After deliberating less than an hour, the 14-member jury sided with the broker from Gibson Sotheby's International Realty over Alyssa Burrage, who said that tobacco fumes from the condominium below the one she bought for $405,000 aggravated her asthma, according to Jay S. Gregory, the Boston lawyer for the broker and real estate firm.

During the weeklong trial, Burrage, a 32-year-old advertising company employee, and her parents testified that they noticed the smell of smoke when they repeatedly visited the condo in Boston's South End in 2006. The broker, Joseph DeAngelo, told them that the seller must be a smoker and the stench would disappear, said Burrage.

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