Smokers
Smoker must pay hotel for room clean-up
A hotel guest who enjoyed illicit cigarettes in his no-smoking bedroom has been ordered to pay compensation to the establishment’s owners.
Bruce Innes breached his contractual duties by smoking roll-ups while staying at the Melverley Heights Guest House in Ipswich, a judge ruled.
Graham and Kim Camplin, who own the hotel, said that the room stank so badly of smoke that they had to strip it and clean it after he checked out. The couple collected discarded cigarette butts from under the window and presented them as evidence at Lewes County Court in East Sussex.
Mr Innes, 56, a technician with a 15-a-day habit, admitted throwing two roll-up butts out of the window of his room during the first of two stays at the guesthouse in May. But he claimed that he had disposed of the butts after smoking the cigarettes elsewhere. “I threw a couple of butts out of the window. I’d stubbed them out to re-use them but left them in my pocket,” said Mr Innes, from East Hoathly, East Sussex. “I thought rather than throw them in the bin, which is going to smell, I would throw them out of the window so that I don’t get into all this hassle.”
Mr Innes accused the Camplins of “manufacturing” the evidence against him, which included an envelope containing five butts and photographs of ash that had been dropped on the floor of room seven.
He claimed that the butts were fatter than those he normally rolled, and said: “I just did not smoke in the room, otherwise I would not have gone back to stay there the second week.”
Judge Nicholas Greenfield ruled that Mr Innes did smoke during his time at the hotel. The court was told that Mr Innes’s first stay was in early May, while working away from home. He paid £45 for single occupancy of a double room that normally costs £65, returning the following week.
By this point, the Camplins claimed, the strong smell meant that they could not rent out the room for one night, leaving them £150 out of pocket.
Mrs Camplin said: “We have always been non-smoking and it’s the law now not to smoke, but I believe certain hotels can have smoking rooms. We never have in our house.
“We’ve got two girls who help us clean and when they went upstairs to clean the rooms they said it smelled strongly of smoke and there was ash on the floor. There was also ash underneath the window and when I looked outside, cigarette ends had been thrown on to the roof of the laundry room.”
The court was told that there were “No Smoking” signs in the guest-house reception and also on the back of each bedroom door. Although Mr Innes’s visits to Melverley Heights were before the introduction of the smoking ban, Judge Greenfield ruled that he had broken his contract with the hotel by lighting up in a nosmoking room.
He found in the owners’ favour, and ordered Mr Innes to pay £105 in compensation plus costs totalling £165. “I think he thought that if he could smoke by the window in the room it would be all right,” the judge told the court.
Mr Innes reacted angrily to the ruling and said: “I didn’t smoke in that room. I haven’t got this sort of money. There’s no justice.”
(Published by Times Online, November 12, 2007)
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