According to Haaretz, a Tel Aviv court recently ruled that restaurant owners and owners of public areas must prevent their customers and workers from smoking. The judge ruled that if one customer smokes, thereby negatively affecting other customers, the smoker is in effect attacking those in his or her presence.
Previous rulings have been based on the laws against smoking, and have stopped short of comparing smoking to physical violence. The ruling could make it possible for customers to sue business owners who fail to prevent smoking for larger sums of money, analysts said.