#Innewsoftheabsurd A landlord’s tenant and the tenant’s guests smoked methamphetamine in the rental unit. Testing found significant levels of methamphetamine residue in the unit and HVAC system. The landlord filed a claim for the resulting remediation, which Farmers denied under a Contaminants exclusion. The landlord then filed suit, asserting the loss was covered because it was caused by vandalism. #drugs #insurance #landlord #tenant #Oregon https://natlawreview.com/article/oregon-declares-meth-residue-contaminant-affirms-coverage-denial
fascinating. “Oregon Court of Appeals disagreed. “The word ‘vandalism’ is not defined but it is…generally defined to mean ‘willful or malicious destruction… of things…or of private property.’…no evidence was presented that the “tenant intended to cause damage to the dwelling...”
The landlord then argued the Contaminants exclusion didnt apply. The exclusion applies to the “release, discharge or dispersal of contaminants….” The Court of Appeals rejected the landlord’s argument.”
@Victor
That’s stupid because people who do spray painting of things to make murals on property that they don’t own is considered vandalism, but they’re not trying to “destroy” the property. They’re just trying to put their art on it because they think it looks good.
@Victor
@Armchaircouch In much the same manner that a hotel that has people that want to smoke stay in a "smoke" room. Otherwise, they'll get charged for the cleaning. Guessing that landlord can now rent dwelling to other meth addicts.../s
@Victor I have a hard time imagining they could possibly have smoked so much meth that it actually left enough residue to pose any real hazard whatsoever.
I bet the surface residue levels were in the microgram/m2 range, which isn't enough to cause any real problems (except - and even this is super unlikely - perhaps in a case where someone is on such a crazy unsafe cocktail of medications that they're riding a razor's edge & any excess catecholamines could cause a hypertensive crisis).
@IrelandTorin Interesting points...yet, would you consider a meth user a responsible person in being careful about handling drug in a manner that would or would not contaminate area where it is being used? Don't know the specifics to lab results, i.e., concentrations, number of sampling points (at least two, room and HVAC), lab method used along with lab QA/QC...
@Victor no, lol, they're not gonna be responsible, tweakers are pretty much all ****ed in the head.
My point is that it'd take so much to contaminate a whole unit severely enough to pose any real hazard that... it just doesn't seem likely at all. Sure, it was probably contaminated, but I doubt the contamination was enough to pose any real risk. Someone was probably just being paranoid.
Even if there was enough contamination to pose a hazard, water soluble compounds can literally be washed off.
@IrelandTorin Dang it. Don't want to go down a rabbit hole about hazardous waste contamination cleaning...as declared by landlord. Though, I started looking at cigarette smoke residue levels that are typically detected by nonsmokers when renting hotel room. As a nonsmoker...not a good time sleeping in the only available hotel room and it happened to be a "smoke" room. You really can't get rid of the smell.
@Victor Hell, even if it was in the mg/m2 range (unlikely), that'd probably not be a huge deal unless it was on the floor/carpet/walls and the new tenant had a baby crawling around. Or tenant's a moron & is literally licking every square cm of the wall.
In which case, just mop the damn floors, wipe down the walls, clean the carpet... problem solved.
I can't see enough coming out of HVAC ducts to be a problem unless they smoked f***ing kgs of it, in which case they'd probably have died already.
@Victor Well, did the landlord pay to have the contaminant cleaned out of the system?