In the year since the first post on pet leases and finance legislation, five additional states have enacted these laws — New York, Washington, Indiana, Connecticut and New Jersey. Of the total seven, only two have included express breeding lease exemptions as discussed in our first post. New Jersey did expressly exempt breeding leases for dogs as well as cats, but unfortunately Connecticut only included dogs, leaving uncertainty whether there was a legislative purpose for the omission or merely accommodation of a request to exempt dog breeding leases, perhaps not realizing that this is a practice of all pedigreed cat registries.

All five statutes without exemptions were narrowly drafted to focus on title to the pet not transferring to the lessee (person in possession who would typically be defined as “owner” under animal laws) until completion of all lease payments as well as the pet being security for performance of the lease and possible repossession by or on behalf of the lessor.  This is the simplest legislative drafting approach to avoid confusion about what might possibly be included rather than is actually prohibited.

Some proposed pet lease bills failed in 2019, so we would expect more efforts in 2020 and beyond. If breeding lease exemptions should be necessary, these should include BOTH purebred dogs AND PEDIGREED cats.