Absent Smoking Notices Prompt a Lawsuit

The owners of more than 1,000 luxury apartment complexes, hotels and commercial buildings in Orange County and throughout the state are failing to properly warn tenants and visitors about the dangers of cigarette smoke, an advocacy group says.

Filing suit last week in Orange County Superior Court, members of the new, county-based Consumer Defense Group allege that building owners are violating health and safety codes by failing to post placards that warn people of on-site carcinogens and reproductive toxins--tobacco smoke, specifically.

The suit names more than a dozen local and national firms, such as the Irvine Co., Days Inn and Radisson Hotels & Resorts. It focuses on buildings and complexes that allow hotel guests to smoke in designated rooms, apartments or open areas outside lobbies or around pools.

The suit does not seek to prevent people from smoking in these areas.

If companies are judged to be in violation of the law, they can be fined as much as $2,500 per day of violation for each building. However, Consumer Defense Group lawyer Anthony Graham said the suit is simply to force posting of the signs and not large penalties.

“Most of the people we’ve contacted are not fighting this,” Graham said. “I think they will all correct the situation rapidly. We’re not looking to become millionaires.”

Representatives of some companies named as defendants declined to comment, said they had not yet received copies of the lawsuit or didn’t return calls.