Architectural Designs

The restaurant below our business is smelling up our office. What can we do?

Our office is above a restaurant, more specifically, an annex for a restaurant across the street. Our office is on the second floor and there is a full kitchen below our space. The restaurant likes to cook their chicken base or stock a few times a week in their space below ours. Despite the kitchen being ventilated, we routinely experience a very strong odor of grease, chicken, etc. Imagine working in a kitchen that just made a big thanksgiving meal. The building that contains both our business upstairs and the restaurant downstairs is owned by one person. He leases both spaces. We have complained about the smell to the landlord (owner) and the restaurant owner and staff. Despite our polite requests nothing has changed. Are there legal precedents for issues like this? I'm fairly sure there has to be a division between a business space and a restaurant space within a common building. To be more specific, our office is a graphic design firm. We have clients coming to our office and we obviously need to be presentable and professional to conduct our work. When our office smells the way it does our credibility and professionalism get thrown out the window. Our space is located in Oklahoma if that helps narrow down any legal issues. What can we do? I should focus my question perhaps. Moving is not an option in the short term. What legal requirements does our landlord have to abide by to keep the two spaces in our building truly separate? An odor surly cannot travel from once space to the other and go unpunished by the causing party. Are there requirements in real estate planning or law that state to what degree a landlord must provide such a division between spaces that each tenant is not affected by the other?

Public Comments

1. They are either unable or unwilling to fix the problem. Your only choice is to move. I am not a lawyer, but you probably can break your lease over this. Document everything.