A federal court has turned up its nose at an insurance company’s attempt to brand as “pollution” the smells wafting from the famed Barney Greengrass delicatessen.

“[W]hile the quality of the plaintiff’s restaurant smells may be in the nose of the beholder, defendant’s ‘pollution’ argument — as addressed to the odors here, is malodorous to the court,” Southern District of New York Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote in Barney Greengrass Inc. v. Lumberman’s Mutual Casualty Co., 09 Civ. 7697.