This article discusses smoke drift tribunal evidence by showing how detailed, consistent record keeping helped secure a successful outcome in a smoke nuisance tribunal case.
Question: How important were detailed records in the success of a recent tribunal hearing? How much effort was it to keep the records?
During Brenton Pittman’s tribunal hearing to stop smoke drift from entering his apartment, the tribunal member described his record keeping as meticulous evidence and compelling. How much effort was it to keep the records? How did Brenton know to keep such detailed records and how much weight does he feel it had on the outcome of the decision? Could this style of record keeping be used for any nuisance case?
Answer: For any nuisance case, detailed record keeping would assist in building the case and make it easier if the matter proceeds to a tribunal hearing.
My previous business dealings involved keeping records that may be used in court for my company. We thought we should be noting a date, a time, what was said, the direction of the wind..etc
The direction of the wind was quite important because one of the excuses was the high level of wind in this area blows the smoke well away from the building quite quickly. We’re on the leeward, North side of the building and more than 60 per cent of the wind blows from the South. Our records showed it’s quite possible we would be the only people experiencing smoke drift.
Our records noted if one or both of us smelt cigarette smoke. We recorded the time of the day, what part of the unit we were in and any other activity that may have been happening eg if we could hear a dog barking or the scraping of chairs.
More importantly, we recorded what the smoke drift was doing to us. Was it distracting us, giving us a bad smell or taste in our mouth, or irritated eyes, sore throat, or lack of concentration?
Over 200 days of recording this, we had 800 events. We collated all of this information into a spreadsheet for the court. Six or eight of the incidents were disputed. When you’ve got one per cent of the evidence disputed, you would imagine a tribunal member will consider the evidence pretty accurate.
Ultimately, I feel that although this evidence wasn’t constantly brought up in the matter, the tribunal member made two or three comments that it was probably the best record keeping he had seen for any of his cigarette smoke cases. I believe it was highly important to the final outcome.
For any nuisance case, detailed record keeping would assist in building the case and make it easier if the matter proceeds to a tribunal hearing.
Brenton Pittman, Applicant in the Pittman v Newport [2022] NSWCATCD 173 case
This post appears in the June 2023 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.