A New York co-op had three months to enforce its no-pit-bull rule. It waited, and the rule was gone.
A New York co-op had three months to enforce its no-pit-bull rule. It waited, and the rule was gone.
2026-09-15 · New York · Courts
The New York City Pet Law gives a building three months from discovering an openly harboured pet to sue. A cooperative that misses that window loses the rule — and on January 21, 2025 the Appellate Division, First Department confirmed that a no-waiver clause in the proprietary lease does not rescue it, and neither does the business judgment rule.
In 360 East 72nd Street Owners Inc. v Wolkoff, 2025 NY Slip Op 00284, 234 AD3d 565, the court affirmed a judgment against the cooperative on both the waiver point and, after a hearing, on the nuisance exception.1
The waiver holding
“Supreme Court properly determined that the cooperative failed to commence this action against defendant to enforce its house rule banning pit bulls within the three-month period of discovering that the dog was a pit bull, resulting in a waiver of the provision under Administrative Code § 27-2009.1 (b), known as the 'pet law.' The court properly rejected the cooperative's reliance on its building's 'pet friendly' policy, which only bans the 'most aggressive' dog breeds, the business judgment rule, and the proprietary lease's 'no waiver' clause to overcome the pet law. This Court has long held that the pet law applies to all leases, including cooperative apartment proprietary leases, even where, as here, the cooperative's proprietary lease contains a 'no waiver' clause (see Seward Park Hous. Corp. v Cohen, 287 AD2d 157, 162 [1st Dept 2001]).”
Three defences, all rejected: the building's own policy language, the business judgment rule, and the no-waiver clause.
And the nuisance exception
The Pet Law allows enforcement past three months where the pet causes damage or a nuisance. The court set out the standard:
“In order to enforce the house rule beyond the three-month period, the cooperative was required to show that the pet law's exception under Administrative Code § 27-2009.1 (d) applied by establishing 'the harboring of a household pet causes damage to the subject premise, creates a nuisance or interferes substantially with the health, safety or welfare of other tenants or occupants of the same or adjacent building or structure'…”
Then the sentence that decides most of these cases:
“Supreme Court also properly rejected the cooperative's insistence that the dog's breed was relevant to whether this particular dog was a nuisance (see Carter v Metro N. Assoc., 255 AD2d 251, 251-252 [1st Dept 1998]).”
What the three-month clock actually runs from
This is where boards most often go wrong, and the language in this case is instructive: the period ran from the cooperative's discovery “that the dog was a pit bull” — not from the dog's arrival, and not from a complaint.
The Pet Law is built around open and notorious harbouring with the building's knowledge. So the practical questions for a board are: when did the building first know the animal was there, and when did it know the fact that makes the animal a violation? In a building with a doorman, a superintendent and a package room, the answer to the first question is usually “immediately,” and the answer to the second is usually earlier than the board thinks.
Breed-based rules are the weakest kind in New York City
Read the decision's two halves together and the structural problem with a breed ban emerges. The rule is waivable on a three-month clock. And when the board tries to invoke the nuisance exception, breed is not relevant to whether this animal is a nuisance. So a board with a breed-specific rule is holding an instrument that expires quickly and cannot be salvaged by the characteristic it was written around.
What survives is conduct. A dog that bites, that is uncontrolled in common areas, that damages the premises, or that interferes substantially with other residents' health, safety or welfare is within the exception regardless of breed — and a board that documents incidents, dates, witnesses and complaints is building the record that exception requires. A board that documents only the breed is not.
What a New York City board can do
Treat the ninety-day window as an operational deadline, not a legal one. That means someone has to own it. The most common failure is not a decision to wait; it is nobody noticing that the clock started. A short standing item — a monthly review of new animals reported by staff, with a date recorded — is the whole fix.
Write the rule around conduct, size and licensing rather than breed. A weight limit, a leash and elevator rule, a requirement of registration and vaccination records, and a conduct standard with a documented complaint process give a board something enforceable after ninety days have passed. Our New York pet restrictions page covers the framework.
Do not rely on the no-waiver clause. The First Department has said for a quarter of a century that the Pet Law applies notwithstanding one. A board told otherwise should ask for the citation.
Keep assistance-animal requests in an entirely separate lane. This decision is about a pet rule and a waiver statute. A request to keep an animal as a disability accommodation is governed by fair-housing law — federal, New York State Human Rights Law, and in the five boroughs the New York City Human Rights Law — and none of that analysis is affected by the Pet Law's three-month clock. Treating an accommodation request as a pet-rule violation is the error that produces liability.
The contrast worth noticing
A New York board's rules can fail on waiver grounds while its admissions decisions hold up. In Manculich v Five Riverside Towers Owners, Inc., 2026 NY Slip Op 50635(U), a Broome County justice dismissed a complaint after a non-jury trial where a co-op board had twice denied an applicant's additional-resident application and she sued under the Fair Housing Act and the New York State Human Rights Law over her emotional-support dog.2
The court set out the framework — “The FHA applies to cooperative apartments” and the Human Rights Law “uses nearly identical language” — and then decided the case on sequence and record:
“Both Mr. Hanzes and Ms. Brundage testified that the decision to deny Plaintiff's application was made immediately after the March 6, 2025 interview, prior to any discussion about disability, an emotional support animal and/or reasonable accommodations.”
“In this matter, Plaintiff's failure to comply with cooperative rules and procedures was in no way connected to any claimed disability. The application was denied before any issue of disability or accommodation was even raised.”
“Defendant showed that the Applications were denied for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons, and Plaintiff did not prove that the proffered reasons were pre-textual.”
The category-level point is about documentation and order of events. A board that records its reasons in the minutes at the time of the vote, before any accommodation issue arises, is in a materially different position from one that reconstructs them afterwards. Our board elections and records inspection pages cover the governance record that becomes the evidence.
Manculich is a trial-level, unreported decision, so it is persuasive rather than binding. Neither case predicts how any particular dispute would come out; what they establish is which facts the analysis turns on.
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