Local government officials are no different from the rest of us—they can, and they do, make mistakes. Generally speaking, however, a municipality does not have to suffer the consequences of its errors.
That is because New York law is well settled that estoppel typically cannot be invoked against a municipality to preclude it from enforcing its zoning laws, to ratify administrative errors, or to prevent it from discharging its statutory duties.1 Of course, in those rare instances where a municipality has engaged in “fraud, misrepresentation, deception, or similar affirmative misconduct” upon which there was “reasonable reliance,”2 an estoppel defense may lie.
