Dayton Daily News

Owner of emotional support parrots wins $165,000

NEW YORK — For almost 20 years, a group of parrots and their owner lived at the Rutherford, a co-op apartment building in the ritzy Gramercy Park neighborho­od of Manhattan.

For almost as many years, the neighbors complained. The parrots shrieked and squawked, they said. The parrots shouted human words, but not clearly enough for the neighbors to follow their conversati­ons. The parrots seemed to generally drive everyone mad.

After years of complaints, the chorus of caws and cries became unbearable. So the building’s co-op board moved to evict the woman who cared for the animals, Meril Lesser.

In response, Lesser said her parrots — three birds named Ginger, Layla and Curtis — were emotional support animals who also cared for her.

That set off a bitter and complicate­d legal dispute that ended this month when the federal government announced a settlement that it said imposed the largest ever financial penalty on a building that had denied its residents’ rights to service animals.

According to the settlement, approved by Judge Jennifer H. Rearden on Aug. 16, the building will pay Lesser $165,000 in damages and will have to buy her apartment for $585,000. The decree said there was “reasonable cause” to believe the building had discrimina­ted against Lesser and later retaliated against her.

“This outcome should prompt all housing providers to consider carefully whether their policies and procedures comply with federal law,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Peter I. Livingston, a lawyer for the building and its former co-op board president, James Ramadei, who was named in the lawsuit, said in a brief interview that they were glad to put the matter behind them.

Disputes inside New York City co-op buildings, a quirk of the local housing market, are regular features of city life. But few get so bad that they must be resolved by the federal courts.

When you buy a co-op, you purchase shares in a building, much as you would stock in a corporatio­n. The shares you buy in the co-op give you the right to live in an apartment.

And like a corporatio­n, a co-op building is run by a board of directors. Such boards can be powerful, and they are often dominated by big personalit­ies. If you run afoul of your neighbors too many times, the building can revoke your residentia­l rights, effectivel­y evicting you from an apartment that you continue to own.

That is what happened to Lesser, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Lesser moved into the Rutherford in 1999. In her co-op interview at the time, she did not bring up her birds, said Tony DiPasquale, 77, who has lived there for 48 years and who served on the co-op board for two decades.

“She never mentioned she had any pets,” said DiPasquale in an interview outside the building on Wednesday. When she did move in with her parrots, he added, “it was never brought up that these were emotional support parrots.”

Over the years, neighbors occasional­ly complained about the noise, he said. But things escalated when Lesser acquired a third bird, a 20-year-old Goffins cockatoo named Curtis, sometime before 2015.

Building residents called in investigat­ors from the city’s Department of Environmen­tal Protection, who visited the Rutherford 15 times in 2015. But, according to prosecutor­s, the inspectors never issued a notice for noise violations. The building also never conducted decibel testing, the prosecutor­s added, nor did it hire a noise prevention consultant.

After a year, the building tried to evict Lesser, citing the ongoing complaints.

According to court documents filed by the building, the attempted eviction prompted Lesser to identify the parrots as emotional support animals for the first time, although prosecutor­s said she first made the claim in 1999.

During the eviction proceeding­s, Lesser supported her claim with a letter from her psychiatri­st, who said she needed her brood of parrots “in order to function optimally.” In addition to Curtis, the tiny flock included a 17-year-old bare-eyed cockatoo named Layla and a 15-year-old white-fronted Amazon parrot named Ginger, the psychiatri­st said.

There are different sets of federal rules governing animals that provide help to humans. The Americans With Disabiliti­es Act regulates the use of service animals in public places, and only permits dogs and miniature horses that have been trained to do tasks. Rules for so-called assistance animals, which provide support for people with disabiliti­es in their homes, are governed by the Fair Housing Act. Its regulation­s are broader, allowing for a variety of animals that offer emotional support, as long as they do not pose a risk to people or property.

According to the settlement, the Rutherford must adopt a reasonable accommodat­ion policy regarding the use of assistance animals. It must also submit quarterly reports to the civil rights unit of the U.S. attorney’s office, so that the federal government can monitor its compliance with the agreement.

Eventually, Lesser decided to leave the building voluntaril­y, because the eviction effort had caused her “to suffer severe emotional harm,” according to the district attorney, Williams.

She filed a fair housing complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developmen­t in 2018. Lesser also tried to sell her apartment, for $467,500, but the Rutherford rejected the proposed buyer, prolonging the dispute, according to Williams. In response to the failed sale, Lesser filed a second complaint, accusing the building of unlawful retaliatio­n against her for her discrimina­tion claim.

Rather than settle the case, the co-op board chose to proceed to federal court. That triggered a requiremen­t that the Justice Department file a lawsuit against the building, Williams said.

Several building residents who were interviewe­d on Wednesday declined to give their names, citing their fear of the board’s power. A few said the dispute should never have reached this point.

They blamed the board for mismanagin­g the situation, reserving special ire for Ramadei, the former board president, who was named in the federal lawsuit. He left the board earlier this year.