Zachary Fox is suing the Wyckoff Planning Board. In a complaint filed July 17, 2026 in Bergen County Superior Court, Fox asks a judge to overturn the board's denial of his application for an unpermitted six-foot fence at 441 Ellis Place — the culmination of a dispute that stretched across seven meetings and eight months. (See our full timeline of the Planning Board dispute.) [1]

The complaint lays out the same basic facts as the board's own record: Fox installed a six-foot vinyl privacy fence without a permit or the required variance, the Planning Board denied his application 9-0 on Nov. 12, 2025 despite testimony from three supportive neighbors, and it took another seven months of extensions before the denial became official. [2] What the complaint adds is Fox's legal theory for why that outcome should be reversed.

Fox argues the Planning Board never had jurisdiction over the matter in the first place. His original 2022 variance — covering a home addition — was granted by the Zoning Board of Adjustment, and Fox's attorneys contend the revised landscape plan showing the vinyl fence should have gone back to that board, not the Planning Board. "The Wyckoff Board of Adjustment possessed jurisdiction over this matter, not Defendant, Wyckoff Planning Board," the complaint states. "The Planning Board did not have jurisdiction to hear this matter." [3]

The complaint also raises a selective-enforcement claim, backed by photographs Fox submitted to the board during the hearings. It alleges other corner-lot properties in Wyckoff have similar six-foot vinyl fences that either received routine approval or were never subject to enforcement, and argues the township cannot apply different fence standards to different property owners. The complaint states the board's treatment of Fox's fence "were discriminatory as government must turn on 'square corners,'" and that "the Wyckoff Land Use Boards cannot have differing fence land use standards for different Wyckoff corner lot property owners." [4]

A separate argument targets the board's own procedure. The complaint claims Chairman Rob Fortunato's vote to deny the application cannot be cured by his later recusal from a subsequent vote on the matter — an apparent reference to Fortunato's recusal from the board's April 8, 2026 vote on granting a further extension, as previously reported; the complaint itself does not specify that date or vote. [5] The complaint further claims the memorializing resolution itself is legally deficient, arguing it "does not reflect the Board's findings of fact, conclusions of law or reflect the hearing testimony and exhibits at hand." [6]

Fox is asking the court to reverse the board's denial outright and order the fence approved as proposed — a 6-foot fence (4-foot solid vinyl with a 2-foot lattice top) screened by 8-foot arborvitae plantings — or, alternatively, to declare the board's action arbitrary and capricious, void the resolution, and find that the Planning Board lacked jurisdiction to hear the case at all. He is also seeking attorney's fees and costs. [7]

The lawsuit is a "complaint in lieu of prerogative writ," the standard legal vehicle in New Jersey for challenging a municipal land-use board's decision. It was filed by attorney Kenneth A. Porro of Brach Eichler LLC, who also represented Fox before the board. [1]

The Township of Wyckoff had not filed a response to the complaint and had not issued any public comment on the lawsuit as of this writing.