Until Mayor Bloomberg succeeds in prohibiting smoking in residential apartments, apartment buildings will just have to comfort themselves with lawsuits. A fancy Central Park West co-op is suing one resident—described as "trust-fund transsexual" Diane Wells—over her smoking. The Post says, "the co-op board of the El Dorado, at 300 Central Park West, says Diane Wells has ignored its pleas to be more considerate of her neighbors — even refusing to use the air purifiers residents bought her for her ninth-floor apartment."

The complaint also says, "Wells smokes so heavily that the smoke and odor permeates the elevator and extends as far down as the lobby of the building and at least as high up as the apartments on the 10th floor." While the building has offered to patch holes from Wells's apartment, Wells has allegedly refused to allow them to do so. So, would you pay $3.5 million to live next to Wells?

A judge said that she must use the purifiers and allow the repairs, but the building still wants to evict her. One miserable neighbor says, "(It’s) so awful that on numerous nights it has interrupted (our) ability to sleep."

Bloomberg said of banning smoking in apartments, "If you really intellectually start thinking about it, we protect people from hurting themselves, if they're trying to jump off a bridge we restrain them."