- Meril Lesser and Charlotte Kullen, two former friends and neighbors of a New York City co-op, feuded after Kullen claimed Lesser’s parrots were making noise in the building
- The co-op building discriminated against Lesser, who kept the parrots as emotional support animals for her disability, when they tried to evict her, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office
- “Those birds have kept me alive,” Lesser said
A long legal battle between two former neighbors over one’s alleged noisy parrots has not only cost their co-op building $750,000 but also shattered their friendship.
In August, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the settlement of a federal lawsuit against the Rutherford, a residential cooperative apartment building, located at 230 E. 15th St. in Manhattan, and its former board president under the Fair Housing Act.
The lawsuit alleged that Rutherford discriminated against a shareholder, Meril Lesser, by refusing to let her live with her emotional support animals to accommodate her disability and for retaliating against Lesser when she filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Lesser and her neighbor, Charlotte Kullen, discussed the case that ended their friendship in a story published in The New York Times on Sunday, Feb. 16.
According to the report, their friendship began when Kullen moved in 1999 next door to Lesser’s apartment on the fifth floor. At the time, Lesser kept two parrots at her home. Meanwhile, Kullen had a cat and eventually two dogs, as well as a horse she kept in a New Jersey barn.
In 2015, Lesser brought home a third parrot, and Kullen later claimed that the new addition made a “nerve-shredding screech” that prompted another of Lesser’s parrots to cackle. The alleged noise went through the wall, Kullen said in court papers, according to the Times.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Lesser said the parrots served as her emotional support animals for her disabilities and there had been no incident until a neighbor brought up the noise claim.
Kullen, the Times reported, addressed the issue of the alleged noise to the co-op board and the building’s management company. She also filed a noise complaint with the city.
“They are screaming and squawking throughout the day, night and in the middle of the night,” she wrote in one complaint.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection visited the Rutheford and Lesser’s apartment about 15 times over a year and conducted inspections of these noise complaints.
“DEP issued zero notices of noise violations,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “RUTHERFORD never conducted any decibel testing or other objective evaluation of the alleged noise complaints. Similarly, RUTHERFORD never retained the services of a noise prevention consultant, architect, engineer, or anyone with qualifications or experience in soundproofing to address the neighbor’s complaints.”
“I was gaslit for a year,” Lesser said in a deposition, the Times reported. “I never had a need to quiet the birds down.”
The attorney’s office added that despite knowing that Lesser had a disability and needed the parrots as her emotional support animals, the Rutherford started eviction proceedings against Lesser in May 2016. (Lesser left her residence two months later due to “emotional harm” from the Rutherford’s actions.)
“I had no intention of staying in that disgusting environment with these awful people,” Lesser said in a deposition obtained by the Times, “who had nothing better to do than harass a woman with mental illness.”
In May 2018, Lesser filed a complaint with HUD, alleging that the eviction proceedings hampered her fair housing rights, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. During that time, Lesser found a buyer for her apartment for $467,500, but the Rutherford rejected them — with the government alleging the rejection was in retaliation against Lesser “for asserting her rights.”
About three years later, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found “probable cause” that the Rutherford violated the Fair Housing Act. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the Rutherford chose to proceed to federal court over the matter, which prompted the Department of Justice to file a suit against the building.
On Aug. 16, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a settlement agreement for $750,000, in which Rutherford would pay $165,000 in damages and offer $585,000 to purchase her shares of her apartment.
“This is the largest recovery the Department of Justice has ever obtained for a person with disabilities whose housing provider denied them their right to have an assistance animal,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in a press statement at the time. “This outcome should prompt all housing providers to consider carefully whether their policies and procedures comply with federal law.”
After leaving the Rutherford, Lesser purchased a home in upstate New York where she lived with her parrots, the Times reported.
“I do have mental illness, and you know what? It’s a disease, and I didn’t choose to have it,” Lesser told the paper. “But those birds have kept me alive. Literally, they kept me alive.”
Of the impact the case had on her, Kullen told the Times, “I used to have, like, dignity. And I stopped having friends because to have friends in New York, you need money to go out. So my life became smaller and smaller.”
