In the case of people versus the pizza oven, the oven wins
The neighbors said their upstairs was in the direct line of the smoke coming from the oven’s chimney.
CLEVELAND — A Cleveland-area couple was settling back down at ground zero this week after their backyard pizza oven finally had its day in court.
It actually turned out to be four days in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, for a lawsuit filed in July 2021 — although the dispute over air quality goes back years before that.
It took a jury about 30 minutes to come back with a Feb. 2 verdict in favor of the owners, declaring that the smoke from their pizza oven did not constitute a “qualified” nuisance to their neighbors, who live on the second floor two doors away.
Just prior to the jury deliberating, Judge Shannon M. Gallagher had dismissed the claim against neighborhood pizza purveyors Mary Lynn Newsome and Paul Schambs that the wood-burning oven was an “absolute” nuisance.
But Gallagher left it up to the jury on whether or not it was a “private” nuisance that amounted to negligence on the part of Schambs — who built the oven — and Newsome.
Schambs and Newsome were sued by Brooks and
Mika Jones for $25,000 — and possibly punitive damages after that — but mainly for an injunction to shut down the oven that family, friends and neighbors love to gather around.
The complaint filed by the Joneses claims that the property sitting between them — all on lots that are 40-feet wide — was air-conditioned, sometimes vacant for months at a time between renters.
Meanwhile, Brooks Jones said in July 2019 that their upstairs was in the direct line of the smoke coming from the oven’s chimney and going into their upstairs, where they did not have air conditioning and kept the windows open during the warmer months.
Asked for any comment several days after the verdict in their favor, Schambs said, “We plan on moving along and hopefully they can too.”
Schambs said he was drained by the whole legal process, including a 6-hour, 45-minute deposition in August — almost all of that on his birthday.
“It was mostly a lesson to their attorney on how a pizza oven works — and to explain that I’m not a complete idiot,” Schambs said, noting that the maximum amount of time allotted for depositions in Ohio is seven hours.
“If nothing else, that was harassment.”
Representing Schambs and Newsome, attorney Samuel Meadows in closing arguments told the jury, “If you rule in favor of the Joneses, that will be the first time in seven years that someone has told my clients, ‘You cannot use your pizza oven.’”
From there, Meadows asked the jury, “what happens next? If this pizza oven is a nuisance, could the Joneses then argue ‘are fire pits a nuisance, are grills a nuisance?’ What about (another neighbor’s) smoker that we’ve heard so much about (at trial)? Does that smoker qualify as a nuisance?”
The fire department told Schambs to shut off the oven at least once, but Jones could not get various agencies to declare the oven a public nuisance.
“We’ve been bounced from the fire department to the police department to the Cleveland Division of Air Quality to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health to the City Law Department, who sent us back to the fire department,” Jones said.
“But a week prior, the fire department told us they could no longer take our calls.”
At the time, Jones asked council to “do something to bring this to an amicable close.”
On Monday, Schambs noted that the Joneses had 30 days to appeal the case.
Responding to a request for comment, the Joneses issued this statement Tuesday: “We’re glad that the trial is over. We regret that we were not able to convince the jury of the seriousness of our problem.”
Schambs recalled having a friend over for pizza with his girlfriend, who was selling her house in an outer-ring suburb and wound up buying a house on his street.
“Everyone has fun and the pizza is pretty yummy too,” Schambs said.