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A fight over a dog in a blue-ribbon Sydney apartment building that escalated into a six-and-a-half-year court battle, ending in a legal ruling recognised as one of the 21st century’s most influential, is now the subject of an explosive new tell-all book.
As a result of the landmark ruling in the NSW Court of Appeal, miniature schnauzer, Angus, won the right to live in the no-pets upmarket block, and blanket bans on animals were outlawed across the state – with many others then ripped up nationwide.
Angus’s owner Jo Cooper, who managed to overturn the 22-year pet prohibition in the exclusive Horizon building in Darlinghurst, says she wrote Toppling Towers of Power as a call to arms for anyone facing injustice.
“I wrote the book to inspire people to have the courage to speak up and confront issues they can see aren’t right,” said Cooper, a former construction project manager, singer, and now a social justice advocate. “People say, ‘I’m just one person, I can’t do anything’.
“But this book confronts that perspective and shifts the narrative from bystander to action. You can’t just stand there and watch what’s happening. If something’s wrong, you have to speak up and do something.”
Cooper, who declines to reveal her age, still lives at Horizon, despite that long-running court battle against its strata committee. Angus died a year after the verdict, and she’s just adopted his puppy replacement, Loki, named after the Norse god of mischief.
The book tells a no-holds-barred tale of what Cooper describes as racism, sexism and a “toxic culture” that she says greeted her when she applied to change the long-established no-pets bylaw at the Horizon. She alleges she was then faced with “a manufactured cycle of martyrdom and blame”.
Further, Cooper, who brought in Angus without permission, claims she was verbally abused by another resident who secretly kept three – illegal – cats in her apartment, and the general hostility against her rose to such a level that her mother would no longer visit the building because of the atmosphere.
When one day Angus urinated in the lobby, Cooper says the floor, which she had wiped clean, was examined “like a crime scene”.
A Horizon representative, who hasn’t yet seen the self-published book which releases in two weeks on Amazon, says the bylaws had been there to protect the rights of the majority who hadn’t wanted pets in the building. But as a result of the legal ruling, they were now welcomed.
“It’s now very much situation normal,” she said. “It’s noticeable that we now have lots of dogs in the building, particularly since COVID, when it seems everybody got dogs. It involves a bit of admin on behalf of the building and the committee, but Horizon is now also an option as a place to live for anyone with a pet.”
A lawyer living at Horizon coincidentally acted for the no-pets strata committee of a nearby building that became embroiled in a similar fight. He said the ruling by the NSW Appeal Court had created a significant change in strata law.
“It overturned 40 years of strata law by saying buildings can’t vote to determine their own policies,” he said. “It’s an important time of change and flux in strata, and I would be interested in what Miss Cooper has to say on that important period in NSW strata law.”
Cooper tried to have the pets ban repealed from 2015 at extraordinary general meetings at Horizon but failed, but then succeeded in having the bylaw declared invalid on the grounds it was harsh, unconscionable or oppressive at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) in 2019.
Horizon appealed and an NCAT appeal panel overturned the win in May 2020. Cooper, in turn, appealed that and, five months later, the NSW Court of Appeal declared the blanket ban oppressive, effectively making it impossible for any strata scheme in NSW to have a blanket ban on pets.
Pet advocate Nadia Crighton, of Pet Insurance Australia, says it was a huge step forward for both pets and their owners. “That decision really shifted the conversation around pets in apartments,” she said.
“For a long time, blanket bans didn’t reflect modern living or the important role pets play in people’s lives. What the ruling recognised is that responsible pet ownership shouldn’t be automatically excluded based on property type. And it’s had a meaningful impact. Pets are part of the family, and housing frameworks need to reflect that reality.”
The final appeal court ruling has now been cited officially in other court cases over 50 times, with people quoting it as far afield as Hong Kong and Canada. It was labelled one of the top 10 influential court cases by the Australian College of Law, and is the only one led by an individual woman.
Cooper says she hoped that penning the book would prove cathartic, but instead, she found herself reliving a lot of the trauma she claims was inflicted on her quite unnecessarily, as the authorities should have stepped in to stop the fight before it lasted so long, and went so high to the top court.
“It shows that strata systems just aren’t working,” said Cooper, who’s also just released a social impact platform, The Good Warrior, supporting other people who are fighting for change. “There are now more than 4.2 million Australians living under strata and the governance structures need to be accountable.
“When rules are used for control and surveillance on people in their own homes, it’s an abuse of power. And when I reached out for help, nobody came to my aid. When we won, lots of people came to congratulate me and say they were on my side, but they should have spoken up at the time.”
She believes that buildings shouldn’t be allowed to decide policies, such those on pets, that are “adverse to community standards”, particularly when perhaps not everyone attends strata AGMs to cast their votes. She also quotes a former resident’s affidavit saying that, even with the pet ban in place, there were six or seven dogs in the Horizon and 20 cats.
