By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — A family at an Upper East Side Co-Op is fuming mad over what they claim is a constant barage of second-hand cigar smoke from their next door neighbor.
Russell and Amanda Poses have filed a $500,000 lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against their next-door neighbor, Harry Dale, claiming that his smoke has kept them from being able to use rooms in their own home, the New York Post reported.
"It's pungent enough that you can't eat dinner," Russell Poses told the Post.
"I've got two children, and I couldn't let them in their own playroom," Poses said.
For his part, Dale, whose wife Ann recently suffered a stroke, said he'd already gone to extraordinary measures to mitigate the impact of his smoking on his neighbors.
Dale said that now he only smokes outside, uses three air-fresheners and professionally sealed his apartment from the Poses' home, according to the Post.
"This has been going on for a year, I thought we'd rectified it," Dale told to the Post.
"The Poses are absolutely unreasonable," he said.
A recent City Hall proposal to ban smoking in public parks, beaches and plazas met with claims of harrassment from smokers in October.
