A Norwegian court on Thursday awarded a young couple 356 000 kroner (about R330 000) in damages after the stench of their Italian leather sofa made them physically ill and forced them to move out of their apartment.
Lena Borlaug and Joergen Jensen, residents of the northern Norwegian town of Bodoe, have for the past three years been struggling to receive damages for the suffering they say their odorous couch caused them.
They claim the smell was so overpowering that it made them nauseous, and caused vomiting, headaches and nose-bleeds.
”In the end we had to move because it simply became too dangerous for our daughter,” Borlaug said.
Despite numerous attempts to get rid of the rancid odor left by the sofa, the apartment continued to reek, and the couple finally had to renovate the entire flat, throwing out all of their furniture and all of their clothing, which had been ruined by the stench.
It remains unclear what the source of the smell was, but according to local news reports, traces of butyric acid, an unpleasant-smelling fatty acid that is found in butter and used in disinfectants, had been found on the couch and on 12 other sofas of the same model. — Sapa-AFP