Question: Is a bylaw legal that bans dogs but allows other animals?
Answer: In my view, you can’t do that.
That’s a really good question, and I think there are a number of strata buildings that are looking at doing something like that. They want to replace their blanket ban on pets with a blanket ban on dogs or certain other types of animals.
In my view, you can’t do that. You cannot impose a blanket ban on dogs, and the reason why you can’t do that is because that bylaw goes too far because there are some dogs that can be kept in an apartment building that will not have a detrimental impact on the amenity of other residents. Imposing a blanket ban on all dogs is a form of overreaching. The court said you just can’t do that.
What the New South Wales Government has done in response to this court decision is pass some new strata laws that will commence later this year, and one of those new strata laws says that you can ban the keeping of pets, provided that the ban is reasonable. What that means is that, for example, you can have a bylaw that says you are not allowed to keep fighting or dangerous dogs in our building. Because that’s reasonable. Because fighting and dangerous dogs will have a detrimental impact on the amenity of other residents because they’re going to attack them. So you should be allowed to ban them.
What you can’t do is just put a blanket ban on all dogs, or all cats or all hamsters and guinea pigs and fish and the like. If you can think of certain exotic pets that someone might want to keep in your building that are definitely going to have a detrimental impact on others.
Let’s take a simple example: venomous snakes that may well be let loose. No one wants venomous snakes in their building. Can you have a ban on venomous snakes? Possibly. However, what happens if you have a very responsible pet owner, who says it’s legal for me to keep a venomous snake in my apartment provided it’s in a certain enclosure, which I promise to maintain. I’ll never open the enclosure the snake will never get out. You can see an argument going both ways there. They will say that a bylaw banning dangerous snakes that could possibly be kept in the building in a way that doesn’t have a detrimental effect on anyone is not valid. But that’s a debate to be had for a later day.
This post appears in Strata News #485.
Adrian Mueller
JS Mueller & Co Lawyers
E: adrianmueller@muellers.com.au
P: 02 9562 1266
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