Posted on 04/22/2014 8:49:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Preet Bharara, the legal troll most recently in the news for going after Dinesh D’Souza, the director behind a movie critical of Obama, and causing a major diplomatic incident with India by strip searching one of their female diplomats, has an even wackier case.
Unlike many of the Indians targeted by the Sikh US Attorney, this time Bharara went after a building over a dog. This is a crazy case in a very literal sense.
In December, Preet Bharara, who puts out more press releases than most spammers, announced that the government was suing a building for discriminating “against a disabled tenant” by “failing to permit a reasonable accommodation of the tenant’s psychiatric disability.”
The keyword here is psychiatric. That means crazy, but not actual crazy, but fake crazy, which makes this case even crazier.
I’ll let Preet Bharara’s own press release explain how stupid and illegal his own lawsuit is.
Aaron suffers from chronic major depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In August 2012, Aaron took in a stray dog, and, within a few days, began to notice improvement in the symptoms of her lifelong mental illness. A few weeks later, East River ordered Aaron to remove the dog. Aaron requested that East River allow her to keep the dog as a reasonable accommodation of her psychiatric disability, submitting a psychiatrist’s letter in support of her request.
Let’s summarize. Woman lives in building that bans pets. Woman picks up stray dog. Woman is told to get rid of dog. Woman gets shrink to write a note claiming that the dog helps with her depression. Building ignores silly nonsense and tells her to follow the rules.
Instead of everyone laughing and moving on, the worst US Attorney in history sued the building instead.
And then the story gets worse. Aaron didn’t just pick up a dog, she picked up a stray pit bull in a city notorious for its drug dealers and their pit bulls. Drug dealer pit bulls tend to be dangerous and unpredictable.
And neighbors complained that Aaron’s dog was a dangerous animal.
I am surprised that Ms. Aaron was able to keep Rosie claiming she suffers from mental stress. I know for a Fact that her dog bit several dogs around the neighborhood including another resident’s small dog and bloodied her face. They asked her to remove the dog because it is potentially dangerous, Not because she wants a therapy dog.
And how much is this costing us shareholders? Incredibly selfish of her. She exercised poor judgment by bringing a stray dog like Rosie (a Pit Bull!) into the buildings. I know she had to pay for vet bills regarding Rosie attack on the small dog. I can’t imagine how that alleviates her anxiety !
Aaron however claims that the dangerous pit bull is a therapy dog that helps her be more social.
“Within a few days, I realized I was able to do things that I hadn’t been able to do before. I became more social—because of her, I actually know the neighbors in the building better,” said Ms. Aaron, who suffers from chronic major depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. “If I stand outside the building for five minutes, people stop to see her, pet her, ask me about her.”
I bet if she wore a jester hat on her head, people would stop and ask her about it too.
Ms. Talel pointed to several issues in the East River case that would make a decision in the tenants’ favor unprecedented—most notably the fact that neither Ms. Aaron nor any of the other plaintiffs acquired pets because of their problems but only noticed the animals’ ameliorative effects after the fact. Moreover, they only applied for the “reasonable accommodations” to which disabled residents are entitled after the co-op board demanded that they remove the animals.
So Preet Bhrara is really suing to allow anyone to keep a pet in a building that forbids pets if they can get a note from a therapist that they are depressed.
Since the symptoms of depressions are ridiculously easy to produce (do you feel listless? uninterested in usual activities?) and since any conceivable thing can make you feel better, this is a ridiculous blank check for everything and anything.
Does playing a Viola at 3 AM relieve your depression? Then it’s a civil right.
Americans with Disabilities Act defines service animals—and the many permissions they are allowed in society—quite narrowly as “working animals, not pets” and stipulates that “the work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability.” It also specifically excludes “dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support.
And feeling sad… is not a disability.
We’re mainstreaming idiotic behavior and then forcing everyone else to accommodate incessant claims of victimhood. And somehow the government has decided to jump in with civil rights lawsuits for people who think that having a dog is a civil right in a private building.
He described several facets of the pending cases—the fact that Ms. Aaron’s psychiatrist refused to testify in court (which Ms. Aaron attributed to the psychiatrist not being able to surrender an entire day from her practice) and the state Commission on Human Right’s initial finding that Ms. Aaron’s case did not have merit, later reversed by HUD, as proving that the tenants did not have a legitimate need for dogs.
Ms. Aaron argues that it shouldn’t matter why she got a dog, only that she did and that it helps.
“Their point of view,” she said, referring to the co-op board, “is that you never had a dog before, so you don’t need it. Well, if I had never had spinach before but it makes me healthy, does that mean I don’t need it?”
“If I knew how much a dog would have influenced my life, I would have never been without a dog. I could have been a much happier, well-adjusted person,” she continued.
Somehow I really doubt it.
Old world grudghes in the new world....?
Be interesting to know what caused her post-traumatic stress disorder.
I’m guessing she didn’t serve in Afghanistan.
If the pit bull killed a kid guess who would get sued. Building owners again, damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
This woman is antisocial all right. She’s just realized that the pretext of needing her breed-of-peace comfort animal allows her to vex her neighbors.
No wonder she is now motivated to come out and play. She can make everyone else’s lives a living hell instead of merely fantasizing about it in her apartment.
some people just need shootin’
BuMP
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