Judge: Parents not to smoke around child

[The1calledTKE]

CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) -- A judge settling custody matters for an estranged couple ordered the pair not to smoke around their daughter, a ruling experts said was the only known example of a court independently raising the issue of secondhand smoke.

Judge William Chinnock's ruling said the 8-year-old is healthy, and it didn't mention any testimony about possible health threats posed by adults smoking in her presence.

Instead, he cited in detail dozens of studies on the harms caused by secondhand smoke and concluded that the court was obligated to act in the child's best interests and limit her exposure to smoke.

"A family court that fails to issue court orders restraining persons from smoking in the presence of children under its jurisdiction is failing the children whom the law has entrusted to its care," Chinnock wrote in the August 27 decision in Lake County.

John Banzhaf III, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Action on Smoking and Health, said many divorce proceedings now include agreements not to smoke around the children, usually when a nonsmoking parent specifically cites concerns about a child's health.

"This is the first one I have heard of where the judge on his own suddenly raised the issue," he said.

Chinnock also ordered the girl's parents not to let anyone else smoke around her.

The family wasn't identified. The girl lives with her mother and the mother's boyfriend, and one of the adults smokes, according to Chinnock's court order.

Chinnock wouldn't comment on the case, citing privacy rules of juvenile court.

Karen Lawson, the attorney for the girl's mother, said the judge issued the smoking order without prodding from either parent. Lawson said she had not decided whether to appeal.

Paul Boynton, a lawyer and contributing editor for Ohio Lawyers Weekly in Cleveland, said the order raises troubling questions about the limits of a court's authority to dictate a child's home environment.

"This really gets into the right to privacy," Boynton said. "Where do you draw the line?"

John Lawson, who helps parents resolve custody and child support issues through the Cleveland Works social services program, was skeptical that the ruling could be enforced, though he said it did seem to be within the court's authority.

"The judge has absolute discretion to make decisions that are in the child's best interest," Lawson said. Protecting children from secondhand smoke "is not that far out a concept."

The judge has been involved in several other high-profile cases. In 1998, he issued a report saying that Cuyahoga County's military-style boot camp didn't reform juvenile delinquents because "boot camps simply make hoodlums into stronger hoodlums." The county shut down the facility.

He also ordered four teens involved in making an X-rated movie to work with a shelter for abuse victims.