Close, but no cigar...
Couple face six-figure bill after suing downstairs tenant for £80k over ‘foul’ smoking habit
A MILLIONAIRE couple were yesterday left facing a six-figure legal bill after accusing their downstairs tenants of ruining soft furnishings with the stink of cigar smoke.
PR boss Nick Boakes, 65, and his husband Harald Denker, 58, said the fug created by American businessman Jonathan Hagmaier caused ‘coughing attacks, headaches and nightmares’.
They also said Mr Hagmaier and his wife Mary let a £9,500 green rug become ‘infested with snails and moths’ after removing it from the multi-million pound home in Warwick Avenue, north-west London.
Mr Boakes and Mr Denker, who lived above the pair, had claimed £81,538 in compensation – but were awarded a fraction of that in court.
They now face a significant bill after Judge David Mayall ruled they should pay the Hagmaiers’ legal costs, which lawyers say would be at least £100,000. The case at Central London County Court started when the Hagmaiers moved out and asked for their £6,270 deposit back but were refused – leading them to sue.
However Mr Boakes, who is nonexecutive chairman at PR consultancy MRM, then countersued as landlord for £81,538 in compensation, claiming the tenants had left a trail of damage at the flat.
Mr Boakes and Mr Denker insisted Mr Hagmaier’s cigar habit was so extreme it led to ‘coughing... and nightmares’. Mr Hagmaier, an education software entrepreneur, denied smoking inside.
After five days in court, Judge Mayall awarded Mr Boakes £2,952 in damages for the costs of cleaning the flat, windows and curtains – partly due to the effects of cigar smoke – and left him to pay the legal costs. He also ruled that the Hagmaiers – who accepted they should pay towards a deep clean of the flat – were entitled to their £ 6,270 deposit. The couple said they left in January 2019 because Mrs Hagmaier’s life had become ‘miserable’.
She had earlier said that ‘living underneath Mr Denker and Mr Boakes was one of the most unpleasant experiences I could imagine’ and that they had used the flat as a ‘storage room’.
‘The relationship with Mr Denker was really difficult from the time we moved in as he would come into our flat with armfuls of things and just set them down saying “this goes with the flat”,’ she said.
‘It was stunning because he came in and out every day and would leave something. One day it was a small porcelain dog and he came down to us and put it on the shelf saying that it goes with the flat.
‘So I realised that anything he couldn’t fit in his own apartment was coming down to ours.’
The Hagmaiers denied failing to keep the flat clean, pointing out they had spent £335 having the windows washed with distilled water. Their lawyers branded Mr Boakes’ £81,538 claim as ‘outrageous’.
Judge Mayall rebuffed claims that Mr Boakes and Mr Denker had to reupholster furniture and replace curtains and soft furnishings due to lingering traces of ‘foul- smelling cigar smoke’. He also rapped Mr Denker for exaggerating the state the flat was left in, saying: ‘I regard Mr Denker as being an extremely unsatisfactory witness indeed.’
‘Unsatisfactory witness’