“Edward H. Lehner, a New York lawyer, legislator and judge who, as a state assemblyman in the 1970s, helped pass a groundbreaking ‘pooper-scooper’ law … died on Sept. 9 in Brooklyn. He was 93.” (NYTimes/Sarah Lyall)
It is wild to me that the principle that dog owners should pick up their dogs’ poop was controversial as recently as when I was a teenager.
Lehner suggested using a disposable plastic bag attached to a pole to pick up the poops. But honestly it’s not a big deal. Just wrap your hand in a plastic bag and pick up the poops. You won’t die. It’s not even gross, not really. Wash your hands when you get home and don’t handle food or a beverage until you do.
As a judge, Lehner blocked Donald Trump, then just a real estate developer, from seizing control of the Empire State Building in 1999 and denied a home buyer’s claim “that he should have been informed, before making a down payment, that the house he was purchasing was infested with poltergeists. (The decision was famously overturned when an appellate court ruled that ‘as a matter of law, the house is haunted.’)”