What Happened: Concerned about the continued presence of smoke in the community, a tenant with an expiring lease asked her landlord if she could renew on a month-to-month rather than annual basis. The landlord agreed. 

Roughly 18 months into the arrangement, the tenant failed to pay rent for two months in a row, and the landlord evicted her. After vacating the apartment, she sued the landlord for violating the lease by failing to enforce the community’s no-smoking policy. As evidence, she submitted a copy of the “Smoke Free Property Addendum” to her lease stipulating that the premises were a “no-smoking living environment,” and that the landlord would “take reasonable steps to enforce” the policy including via posting no-smoking signage. 

The landlord insisted that it did try to enforce the policy and wasn’t responsible for the conduct of tenants outside its control. 

Ruling: The Wisconsin appeals court upheld the trial court’s ruling in the landlord’s favor.  

Reasoning: The trial record contained evidence to support the conclusion that the landlord took reasonable steps to keep the community smoke-free, including:

• An actual no-smoking sign that was posted in the community;
• An email from the tenant acknowledging that the sign had been posted; 
• Another email assuring the tenant that it was “doing everything possible” to deal with the smoking and urging the tenant to help it determine where it was coming from, especially in the hours when on-site staff left was gone; and
• A letter from management notifying tenants about the complaints about smoking it was receiving and emphasizing that smoking was a lease violation.

The addendum also included language noting that the landlord “cannot and does not warranty or promise that the rental premises or common areas will be free from secondhand smoke,” and that the landlord’s “ability to police, monitor, or enforce” the no-smoking policy is “dependent in significant part on voluntary compliance.”

• Morgan v. Wis. Mgmt. Co., 2025 Wisc. App. LEXIS 874, 2025 LX 435096, 2025 WL 2778962