Enforcing a No-Pet Clause in a Lease

April 20, 2003

Q. I occupy an apartment leased by my employer. The lease contains the standard "no pets without the express consent of the owner" clause. Because my downstairs neighbors have a dog, I began to explore adopting one for myself. When I phoned the landlord, however, he withheld his consent. He thanked me for having the courtesy to ask, but claimed that the neighbors below had never bothered to request permission and that, had they done so, he would not have approved. Can the landlord selectively enforce this clause of the lease? David M. Buss, Manhattan.

A. "Pets are often a source of contention between New York City landlords and their tenants," said Lucas A. Ferrara, a Manhattan lawyer who is editor of the Landlord-Tenant Practice Reporter, a monthly publication for lawyers. "However, the law is pretty well settled that when a lease prohibits pets, that prohibition is valid and binding, provided that the landlord acts quickly to enforce the agreement's terms."

Mr. Ferrara said that under the New York City pet law, if a landlord discovers that a pet is in an apartment in violation of the lease, the landlord has three months to take action against the tenant to remove the animal.

Since the letter writer is a subtenant, the landlord would take action against both the employer and the subtenant. If the landlord fails to act within that time, he said, the animal may remain in the apartment.

"There could be a number of reasons why tenants in the letter writer's building have pets," he said, adding that the failure of the landlord to take action would be one such reason. Allowing a pet for medical reasons would be another. "But unless the letter writer can prove that the policy is being applied in an illegal or discriminatory way," Mr. Ferrara said, "just because a neighbor has a dog is not enough of a legal reason for the letter writer to have one too."