PUP'S 'PIT'Y PARTY IN HAMPTONS
Judge gives summer off to ‘dangerous dog’
Here’s a very Big Apple solution to a neighborhood dog fight.
A Manhattan judge has ordered a “dangerous dog” living in a Chelsea condo to summer in the Hamptons until a case filed by the owner of a Havanese that was attacked by the pit bull can have a full hearing in court.
“Luna, the dog at issue, will remain in Quogue June 15, 2018, through September 12, 2018,” Justice Joan Madden ruled Tuesday, noting that during the week before and after, “Luna will be muzzled on the block of West 18th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues.”
A hearing set for Sept. 18 will determine if Luna meets the legal definition of a “dangerous dog,” which would require the pit bull to permanently wear a muzzle and could mean she’d be put down if she bites another pet or person.
Vivian Liu, who lives in Luna’s Chelsea condo with her 8-pound Havanese, Kinje, sued last week to have Luna declared dangerous after the hulking hound savaged her purse-size pup last year.
Luna continued to lunge and snarl at Kinje after the attack, which was caught on video, according to the lawsuit.
The judge met with the parties’ lawyers in court Tuesday and worked out the creative settlement, whict keeps the two dogs apart by sending Luna to her owner’s summer home.
Luna’s owner, Michelle Kelban, a lawyer with Latham & Watkins, had already planned on living in Quogue while on maternity leave.
“We volunteered, since we’re spending the summer in Quogue anyway, to keep the dog there,” said Kelban’s lawyer, Adam Leitman Bailey. “There’s been no other bites, no other contact with people or dogs” since the June 2017 incident.
But Liu’s attorney, Richard Bruce Rosenthal — who bills himself online as The Dog Lawyer — was not having it.
“We have no intention of backing down,” he said. “Nothing about this is vengeful. It is simply [that] they cannot control the dog.
“If there’s an incident out [in the Hamptons] they will pick her up. They’ll seize her and they’ll hold her and they will seek an order of destruction,” Rosenthal added, nothing that Long Island has stricter regulations on aggressive dogs than New York City.
The suit marks the first time a dog owner has gone to court in New York to get a canine labeled dangerous, according to Rosenthal.