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Is it deemed too harsh to make an owner carry their little dog which they can reasonably carry or have in a backpack, up five floors as the body corporate has a ‘no dogs in lift by-law’
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The law says by-laws can’t be “harsh, unconscionable or oppressive”. You could argue that the by-law ticks all three of those boxes and if NCAT agrees, your owners corp may have to go back to the drawing board.
The easist ways to find out are to:
- Ignore the by-law and fight the Notice To Comply breach notice when it arrives, or
- Challenge the by-law at Fair Trading and NCAT pre-emptively.
- Tell your strata committee that you think the by-law is invalid, for the above reasons, and as a result you will be ignoring it.
The latter tactic is pretty much saying “bring it on” and you may prefer a less aggressive response. But if you are being hrassed in any way, tell them you believe the by-law is invalid and you are happy to see that tested at the tribunal.
I recall reading somewhere that the by-laws can’t deny residents reasonable access to their apartments and forcing you to carry your pet up five flights of stairs could easily be defined as unreasonable.
A sensible by-law would require you not to enter the lift when there was someone already in it who objected to travelling with a pet.
For what it’s worth, this sounds like a strata scheme trying to get round the removal of “no-pets” by-laws and they have found a particularly clumsy way of trying to do so.
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Is it deemed too harsh to make an owner carry their little dog which they can reasonably carry or have in a backpack, up five floors as the body corporate has a ‘no dogs in lift by-law’
Such a ban doesn’t seem to have everything reasonable. Although I am in favor of walking up and down stairs because it is good for your health.
However, it would be worthwhile to work out the restrictions more sensibly. For example, if a pets pooped in the elevator – then the owner cleans up.