Short answer. Yes, if you can show damage. Article 2191 makes proprietors responsible for damages caused by excessive smoke, which may be harmful to persons or property. The claim is against the proprietor of the premises producing it, and what you recover is the harm you actually prove.
What the law says
By excessive smoke, which may be harmful to persons or property
Civil Code, Article 2191 — Other Liabilities of Proprietors. Read the full provision →
The word doing the work is “excessive”
Smoke as such is not actionable; the article speaks of excessive smoke, which may be harmful to persons or property. A commercial kitchen, a workshop or a generator will produce some, and living beside one carries a measure of it. What the provision reaches is the volume or the persistence that goes past what a neighbouring property is expected to absorb. That is a question of degree, judged on the actual circumstances, and it is the point on which a claim of this kind is usually contested. Framing your complaint around how much and how often, rather than around the smell alone, is what puts it into the article's language.
Harmful to persons or property
The second half of the phrase matters as much as the first. The article contemplates smoke harmful to persons or property, which covers both the effect on the building and the effect on the people in it. Blackened walls, corroded fixtures, ruined stock and laundry that cannot be dried are property harm; respiratory complaints and windows that cannot be opened go to persons. But the article compensates damage, not annoyance in the abstract. If nothing has been harmed and nothing can be shown to have been harmed, the provision has little to bite on, however unpleasant the situation is.
It is the proprietor who answers
Article 2191 is addressed to proprietors, so the defendant is the person who holds the premises the smoke comes from. Where the shop is a tenant and the building belongs to someone else, work out who actually controls the source before writing to anyone, because a letter to the wrong party wastes the leverage an early demand carries. Note too that this article is about damages. It answers who pays for the harm done; whether the operation can be made to stop, and by whom, is a separate matter governed by other rules and by the regulation of the activity itself.
Smoke is transient, so document it
Photograph and film it at different times of day over a period of weeks, with timestamps, so the record shows persistence rather than one bad afternoon. Keep a dated log of episodes. Photograph the staining, the corrosion and the damaged goods as they develop, and get an estimate for cleaning or repair. If anyone in the household has been treated, keep the clinical records. Written complaints to the operator and to the barangay matter twice over: they evidence the nuisance and they show that the proprietor knew about it.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 2176 — Quasi-Delict Defined (Culpa Aquiliana)
- Civil Code, Article 2199 — Actual Damages Must Be Proved