'Support' Dog Attacks 12, Callous Canine Cover-Up By Owners: Suit

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Moments after an Upper West Side man was bitten by his neighbor's dog inside his building's elevator, the Harvard Law-educated owner told an NYPD officer that her dog had never attacked anyone before.

Turns out, it has happened at least a dozen times, according to a newly filed lawsuit by the victim.

The suit accuses the owners — and the building's management — of not only knowingly harboring a dangerous dog, but also of taking no steps to prevent it from attacking people and of covering up its long history of violence.

"It's shocking, frankly," said the attorney who filed the lawsuit last month, Jeffrey K. Levine.

Levine's client, Joseph Venafro — who was attacked last fall inside his building's elevator and left with numerous puncture wounds after the dog bit him at the same spot he had abdominal surgery years earlier — is suing the dog's owners for physical pain, slander and defamation, and accuses them and the building's management of failing to safeguard the animal and of concealing the dog's repeated attacks.

"If you know the dog is a dangerous dog, and he bites, and you need to go into the elevator, and they're already occupying the elevator, would you walk in?" Levine said.

"We have plenty of evidence to show that the dog is dangerous," said Levine, "and under the agricultural law, the dog should be at a minimum removed, in my opinion, and it'll be up to the judge in cases like this."

"Oftentimes," he added, "they'll be euthanized."

The dog's owners couldn't be reached for comment.

A history of violence and a canine cover-up

Between 2021 and last fall, the dog attacked at least 12 people, with the dog successfully biting at least two people, the suit contends.

Most attacks unfolded inside the West 79th Street building's elevator — and some victims were attacked more than once, the lawsuit states.

After each incident, the suit contends, the owners either promised the dog would be muzzled afterward, that the dog loves everyone — and it must be the victim's fault — or they simply stood in awkward silence inside the elevator as their dog snarled and lunged.

The only honest response the owners, attorneys Almy Katz and Inna Fayenson, gave to their neighbors was their indifference, according to the suit.

The suit contends that the history of canine violence began in the winter of 2021 to 2022, when the unprovoked dog attacked a neighbor as Fayenson exited the elevator.

The next day, Fayenson assured the resident that the dog had never done this before, that the victim "must have startled" the mutt when she left the elevator and that it would be muzzled, the suit states.

The Harvard-educated lawyer then added a request: please don't tell the landlord, the suit reads.

"Contemporaneous with the request to conceal animal's attack," the suit reads, "defendant Fayenson gave consideration to [the] victim — a box of Levain cookies."

According to the lawsuit, that was the first, and last, box of Levain cookies distributed to any of the dog's 12 listed victims.

Avoid owner and dog "at all costs"

But that September the dog again was in the building's elevator with Fayenson, unmuzzled, and "aggressively growled" and lunged at a resident, according to the suit.

"Fayenson yanked at animal's strained leash a split second before animal was able to bite," the suit states.

The thwarted bite was only a prelude, according to the suit.

Attacks really ramped up in 2023, when 10 people were threatened by the animal, who would growl, snap, bark and lunge at neighbors unprovoked, according to court documents — including a mother and her young child, whose fears were downplayed by Fayenson.

In each attack, despite the promises made to the neighbors Fayenson bothered to talk with, the dog remained unmuzzled, the suit states.

Fayenson told some of the victims, as she struggled to restrain the dog, "I just don't know what it is about you, he [the dog] likes everybody," according to the lawsuit.

One man told his family that they were to avoid "Fayenson and animal 'at all costs' out of fear for their safety that they may be attacked and seriously injured by animal," the suit states.

Another, who was attacked first in March, screamed "Control your dogs!" to Fayenson when he was attacked for a second time that September as he entered the elevator in the building's lobby, according to an incident outlined in the lawsuit.

And a delivery worker was attacked that August, the suit says, when the dog lunged and successfully bit him from behind, an event witnessed by a resident who immediately reported it to a doorman.

Never did Fayenson warn her neighbors or visitors of her dog's potential behavior issues, even when the unaware neighbors were entering the tight, enclosed space of the elevator, the suit contends.

In fact, she often did the opposite: claiming that the dog had never attacked anyone before, according to the suit.

Slander and lies

Beyond the claimed history of violence, the dog's owners, Katz and Fayenson, spread lies and slander to other building residents about the September 2023 attack, the suit asserts.

Venafro suffered "severe injuries" when the dog bit into a surgical scar after two failed lunges towards his body inside the tight space, according to the filing.

Katz even told a New York Post reporter last fall that the attack wasn't a big deal at all.

"He needed a BandAid and he needed antibiotics. If it were [a big deal], he would have gotten admitted. No sutures were necessary. They cleaned the wound and sent him home," he told the Post.

Doctors are typically reticent to stitch animal bites, which could seal in bacteria and cause potentially fatal complications, according to The George Institute for Global Health.

Fayenson, who attended the elite Harvard Law School, also told the Post that her dog — "a mix of unknown breeds," in the tabloid's wording — was an emotional support animal, a claim that the suit contends is false.

Levine called the statement made to the Post "callous and bizarre," and said he doesn't believe the dog has had any training or has any license as an emotional support animal.

"She claims that Cujo is an emotional support dog," Levine added, referencing the Stephen King novel about a killer canine.

"It doesn't really qualify in any reasonable sense of that term as an emotional support dog, because it's basically an attack dog," Levine told Patch.

The pair didn't just dismiss the mutt's attack on Venafro in the press — they also hid the animal's known dangerous history from a responding NYPD officer right after the attack, the suit contends.

Knowing their pooch could be poached from the building if found to be dangerous, the suit claims the attorneys instead "downplayed the attack and concealed animal's prior vicious propensity to the NYPD."

The bar-admitted duo then started telling other residents that in Venafro's attack, which required a 10-day regimen of antibiotics and a tetanus shot following the bite, "nothing happened," the suit states.

Venafro then found himself having to defend his traumatic experience when later confronted by neighbors who had only learned about the attack from the dog's owners, according to the filing.

He often "felt the need to defend his reputation by waiving his medical confidentiality and showing the physical injuries to his abdominal region," the suit reads.

A cover-up

As he stood in the lobby after the attack waiting for the police, Venafro contends a doorman at the building "admitted his awareness of prior attacks or threats of attacks by animal at the premises."

In fact, the suit reads, another employee of the building managed by Rotner Management was attacked by the dog inside the elevator a month after Venafro's bite.

This time, the dog was muzzled and with a dog walker who lost control of the dog's leash, according to the suit.

Despite the muzzle, the dog "nevertheless wildly thrashed his mouth back and forth against employee's leg in an attempt to free himself from the muzzle and bite employee," the suit states.

The worker warned the dog walker that "this kind of vicious and dangerous behavior was unacceptable."

But despite all the signs that the building's management was aware of the dog's behavior and history, the lawsuit reads, no warnings to residents were made.

In follow-up conversations with Venafro, the suit claims that Rotner admitted to the dog's dangerousness, and said the pooch "should not be on the premises and that their legal team was taking action, but that it was taking time to wind through the Courts."

A Rotner Management representative declined to comment on either the dog or the lawsuit.

The only time that neighbors were alerted to the presence of a potentially aggressive dog in the building is when, following Venafro's attack, "some residents decided to anonymously speak up about prior vicious instance involving animal, both in writing and orally, to warn other residents of the dangerousness of animal," the suit states.

According to the New York Post story, one resident slid notices under their neighbors' doors, alerting them of the dog's behavior.

"This is a rental property rental building," said Venafro's attorney, Levine. "And rental buildings have an obligation and a duty to maintain that premises in reasonably safe condition. And in a situation like this, where they know that there are dogs being harbored that are a threat to the residents... and they do nothing about it. That's a problem."