Research

What Happened:

Homeowners built a fence enclosing their side yard in violation of a 1987 deed restriction barring fences nearer the front property line than the rear of the dwelling. The subdivision's Architectural Committee sued, won an injunction ordering removal, and was awarded $17,677.67 in attorney's fees.

What the Court Held:

Reversed and rendered in part; remanded in part. The Architectural Committee is a "property owners' association" under Tex. Prop. Code § 202.001(2) based on its function — owner membership, enforcement and approval powers — regardless of its name. Section 202.023, which bars a POA from prohibiting a perimeter fence, therefore applied: the restriction remains valid but is unenforceable against perimeter fences (following Corbin v. Commons of Lake Houston Prop. Owners Ass'n, 696 S.W.3d 267 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2024, pet. denied)). The fee award was reversed and the case remanded for possible fees to the owners.

What Happened:

A Houston homeowner received repeated violation notices — unapproved fence, grill and items in public view — issued under 1965/2009 deed restrictions and a board-adopted maintenance policy. She sued, claiming the board improperly adopted its policies and bylaw voting provisions and enforced an invalid policy against her. The trial court granted summary judgment for the association.

What the Court Held:

Affirmed. The board validly adopted its maintenance and preapproval policy under Tex. Prop. Code § 204.010(a)(6) without the owner-approval amendment process of § 204.008, because a board rule is valid unless it conflicts with the deed restrictions (applying JBrice Holdings v. Wilcrest Walk Townhomes Ass'n, 644 S.W.3d 179 (Tex. 2022)). The court applied the § 202.003(a) liberal-construction rule and the § 202.004(a) presumption of reasonableness for discretionary association action, and held challenges to rules never applied to the owner were not ripe — no concrete injury, no justiciable claim.

What Happened:

A unit owner made a written records-inspection request in April 2018. The association president testified he drafted a response letter and "probably gave it to one of his staff members to mail"; the owner never received it, sent a certified-mail follow-up noting the association was 24 working days past deadline, and got no response. The trial court found the letter was "lost in the mail" and declined to find willful noncompliance.

What the Court Held:

Affirmed in part; reversed in part. Failure to provide access within 10 working days creates a rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance under § 718.111(12)(b)–(c), Fla. Stat., and the association failed to rebut it — no affidavit, no mailing log, no competent evidence the response was actually sent. The court stressed that the association's silence in the face of the owner's follow-up notice "converts unintended miscommunication to 'willful failure,'" exposing the association to the statutory minimum damages of $50 per day, which § 718.111(12)(c) caps at 10 days ($500). The court separately held the association's rule limiting owners to one records request per month was illegal.

What Happened:

The association foreclosed an assessment lien, obtained final judgment, and a third party bought the home at the foreclosure sale. A junior judgment-creditor defendant then had the entire judgment vacated and the sale set aside because he was never properly served — the association stipulated to the defect. Instead of appealing that order within 30 days, the association filed its own motion to vacate it, lost, and appealed the denial.

What the Court Held:

Appeal dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The later order was in substance a denial of an unauthorized motion for rehearing, which does not toll the 30-day appeal deadline under Fla. R. App. P. 9.130(a)(5) — an untimely appeal cannot be revived by obtaining a new order to the same effect. The court also held that neither § 720.3085(1)(c) nor § 720.305(1), Fla. Stat., authorizes prevailing-party fees to a nominal junior-lienholder defendant or a third-party foreclosure-sale purchaser.

What Happened:

An HOA governing attached townhomes sued to abate years of loud-noise disturbances the association attributed to an adult resident with autism. The family counterclaimed under the federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(1), alleging the enforcement effort discriminated based on disability by making the dwelling unavailable. A jury found for the association, and the trial court entered a noise injunction but granted a new trial on the FHA counterclaim.

What the Court Held:

The DCA affirmed the injunction as narrowly tailored — noise limits tied to the city ordinance's decibel levels, no interference with neighbors' mail — and reversed the new-trial order, directing verdict for the association on the FHA counterclaim. Post-acquisition conduct can violate § 3604(f)(1), but only where it effectively makes the dwelling unavailable; the family remained in the home with no credible evidence of a genuine risk of losing it. The association recovered prevailing-party fees under its declaration and § 720.305(1), Fla. Stat., for the state-law claim — but not for FHA-related work absent a showing the FHA claim was frivolous.

What Happened:

After the City of Miami issued a "Repair or Demolish" unsafe-structure notice for the marina shared by two condominium towers, unit owners sued the association for gross mismanagement — breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, equitable accounting, and misuse of special-assessment funds under § 718.116(10), Fla. Stat. The trial court granted the owners leave to add a punitive damages claim against the association.

What the Court Held:

Reversed. Under § 768.72, Fla. Stat., the trial court is a gatekeeper: before a punitive claim may even be pleaded, the plaintiff must make a reasonable evidentiary showing — and punitive liability against an entity additionally requires willful and malicious conduct by a managing agent plus active participation, ratification, or gross negligence by the entity under § 768.72(3). The owners' allegations and proffer did not meet that standard, and the order granting leave to amend was reversed on immediate appeal (Fla. R. App. P. 9.130(a)(3)(G)).

What Happened:

Owners in a Dana Point common interest development paid a premium for ocean and golf course views. Section 7.18 of the recorded CC&R's required that "[a]ll trees, hedges and other plant materials" be trimmed so as not to exceed the height of the house on the lot, unless the architectural review committee determined the trees did not obstruct views from other lots. Because trimming a palm effectively destroys it, the association took the position for years that section 7.18 did not reach palms: board rules adopted in 1996 excluded palms outright, an attempted CC&R amendment to exempt palms failed for want of owner votes, and rules adopted in 2006 while the suit was pending defined "view" as what is visible from the middle of the rear of the house, six feet above ground, looking straight ahead, and barred removal of any pre-2006 palm without the tree owner's consent. Owners sued for declaratory relief and to compel enforcement.

What the Court Held:

Affirmed. Section 7.18 was unambiguous, and nothing in the CC&R's permitted the association to exempt an entire species because it preferred the aesthetic benefit. The Lamden rule of judicial deference to community association board decisionmaking is an affirmative defense that was waived by not being raised before trial and, in any event, does not extend to board action outside the authority the governing documents grant. The 2006 rules conflicted with the CC&R's; even assuming the board had discretion to define "view," it could not adopt a definition that rendered section 7.18 meaningless. The committee retains good-faith discretion to decide whether a particular tree obstructs a view, but not to exempt trees that do. The judgment directing the association to use every enforcement mechanism available to it was neither overbroad nor impermissibly vague, and the individual tree owners were not indispensable parties (Civ. Code, § 1368.3).

What Happened:

The case reached the California Supreme Court on demurrer, so the following are the owner's allegations accepted as true for pleading purposes — not adjudicated findings. Through 1980 a large Los Angeles condominium project experienced car thefts, burglaries and robberies documented in the association's own newsletter. A unit owner whose home had already been burglarized asked the board repeatedly to improve exterior lighting in her court; the board's investigation produced no action over roughly six months. She installed her own exterior lights, and the board ordered her to remove them and not to use them pending removal, citing the CC&R prohibition on altering the common areas without written board consent. Because the added fixtures shared circuitry with her original lights, complying required her to shut off all exterior lighting. On the night she complied, an intruder entered her darkened unit and molested, raped and robbed her.

What the Court Held:

Reversed in part. A condominium association that controls the common areas is held to a landlord's standard of care toward residents for foreseeable criminal conduct by third parties in those areas, and foreseeability does not require prior identical or even similar incidents. Individual directors are not vicariously liable for the association's torts, but a director may be personally liable where the director specifically authorized, directed or participated in the tortious conduct, or knew or reasonably should have known that a hazardous condition under the board's control could injure the plaintiff and negligently failed to act — and where an ordinarily prudent person, knowing what the director knew, would not have acted similarly. The Corporations Code section 7231 standard governs a director's fiduciary duty to the corporation, not the common-law duty owed to third parties; reasonable reliance on competent expert advice remains a defense. The negligence cause of action was reinstated against both the association and the directors; dismissal of the breach-of-contract and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims was affirmed.

What Happened:

An owner with asthma in a Michigan condominium complex complained that cigarette smoke from a downstairs rental unit entered her condo and the common hallways. The bylaws said nothing about smoking, Michigan law permits smoking in one's home, and the association had long read the bylaws to allow it. Board minutes record the complaints and the board's responses: a 2016 letter asking the unit owner to help keep the smell contained, a $275 fresh-air system installed on the complaining owner's ductwork at association expense in 2017, the tenants' voluntary agreement to run an air purifier, and — after suit was filed — circulation of a bylaw-amendment package proposing a complex-wide smoking ban, which the membership rejected. The owner sued the association and its management company under the Fair Housing Amendments Act and Michigan law, and for breach of covenant and nuisance, seeking an injunction against smoking in her building.

What the Court Held:

Affirmed. "Reasonable accommodation" under 42 U.S.C. section 3604(f)(3)(B) means a moderate adjustment to a challenged policy, not a fundamental change in it, and a building-wide smoking ban in a complex that had always permitted lawful in-unit smoking was the latter. The court also noted thin evidence that the asthma was a statutory handicap and that a total ban was "necessary" to equal use and enjoyment. On the bylaw barring anything that "may be or become an annoyance or a nuisance," the standard of annoyance must be set high enough to permit activities generally expected in a condominium complex, which at Echo Valley included both cooking and smoking; the board's documented responses undercut any claim that it failed to enforce. The common-law nuisance claim failed because liability requires possession and control of the offending property, and an association is "even farther removed" from an owner's unit than a landlord is from a tenant's. A claim under the "unlawful or offensive activity" bylaw was forfeited because it was raised first at summary judgment without a motion to amend.

What Happened:

A condominium association's rules prohibited dogs with no exceptions, and the association had no policy of any kind for assistance animals. Two owners with disabilities obtained emotional support dogs and filed doctor's letters and certifications with the association's office manager in February and July 2011. The board took no action at the time. That October, after a resident's blog began naming one owner, the board president emailed both owners that they were in violation, wrote that the office had "papers" but that no exception had been applied for, and gave them ten days to submit a request; he copied the email to the blogger, who posted it. In January 2012 the board voted fines of fifty dollars per day, held in abeyance pending legal advice, while the blog debated the owners by name for months. A new board president received formal requests in March 2012; in April 2012 the board granted them and waived the accrued fines. One owner died while the litigation was pending, which put the survival of her claim before the court.

What the Court Held:

Reversed in part and vacated in part; remanded. A Fair Housing Act claim survives the death of a party under federal common law rather than the gap-filler in 42 U.S.C. section 1988(a), so the deceased owner's case was improperly dismissed. On the merits, summary judgment for the association was reversed on both the reasonable-accommodation claim under 42 U.S.C. section 3604(f)(3)(B) and the interference claim under section 3617, because the parties genuinely disputed whether the board reviewed the paperwork already on file and whether the owners barred it from doing so. Summary judgment for the two individual residents who wrote and commented on the blog was reversed on the section 3617 interference claims, and the grant in favor of the deceased former board president was vacated. This is an appellate revival of claims for further proceedings — not a finding of liability.

What Happened:

A Chicago condominium association adopted "Hallway Rules" in 2001, the first of which prohibited "[m]ats, boots, shoes, carts or objects of any sort" outside unit entrance doors. For three years the association applied the rule to clutter and did not remove objects affixed to unit doors or doorposts. After a hallway renovation in May 2004 the association began removing and confiscating mezuzot — the small scroll cases many Jewish residents are religiously obligated to affix to an exterior doorpost — along with crucifixes, wreaths, ornaments, political posters and team pennants. A Jewish family that had displayed mezuzot for about three decades supplied the association with rabbinical letters explaining the religious requirement; the board rejected a proposed rule change and warned of fines, and removals continued for over a year, including repeatedly during the seven-day mourning period following a family member's funeral, while a coat rack and table the association had supplied remained in the same hallway. The association later created a religious-object exception, and city and state law were amended, mooting the claim for an injunction.

What the Court Held:

Reversed in part and affirmed in part; remanded. Sitting en banc, the court held that the Fair Housing Act reaches some post-acquisition discrimination. Because owners agree at purchase to be governed by rules the board has not yet adopted, that agreement is itself a term or condition of the sale, so 42 U.S.C. section 3604(b) prohibits an association from discriminating through its enforcement of the rules, including facially neutral rules. Section 3617's prohibition on coercion, intimidation, threats and interference has independent meaning and is not merely duplicative of section 3604. Summary judgment for the association and its president was reversed on the section 3604(b), section 3617 and 42 U.S.C. section 1982 claims, and affirmed on the section 3604(a) claim because the owners were not constructively evicted. The case was remanded for further proceedings; the ruling revived the claims rather than resolving them.

What Happened:

Panther Valley is a gated common interest community in Warren County of more than 2,000 homes, governed by an association organized in 1968. In October 1998 the membership voted to adopt six amendments to the community's declaration of covenants and the association's bylaws. An owner who had bought in 1976 sued to challenge five of them: a bar on residency by any individual registered as a Tier 3 offender under New Jersey's Megan's Law; authority to record a "Notice of Continuing Violation" with the county clerk against a persistently violating owner; owner liability for the association's counsel fees and costs when the association prevails in an enforcement suit; a new procedure governing member inspection of the association's books and records; and minimum qualifications for candidates for the board of trustees. The trial court upheld three amendments and struck two; both sides appealed.

What the Court Held:

Affirmed in part and reversed in part. Amendments adopted after an owner's purchase, under a declaration amendable by simple majority and voted by the membership rather than the board, are reviewed for reasonableness and receive no presumption of validity; the business judgment rule's rationale, grounded in board decisionmaking, was absent. The records-inspection amendment was facially valid — a three-year window, ten business days' written notice, two-hour sessions and enumerated withholding categories — because N.J.S.A. 15A:5-24c requires "at least" five days rather than capping notice at five, with overbreadth left to case-by-case review and any response required to be made in good faith and not "structured with an eye to self-protection." The candidate-qualification amendment was upheld, in part because it added a ten-percent petition route to the ballot that had not previously existed. The fee-shifting amendment was reinstated as reasonable. The recorded-notice amendment was struck down because an owner is entitled to notice before a notice of violation is recorded against the property. As to the Tier 3 residency bar, the court reversed the trial court's validation and expressly declined to rule on validity, holding the summary record insufficient to weigh whether such covenants adopted across many communities would close a large segment of the housing market, and it declined to remand.

What Happened:

An owner in an approximately 8,000-home Las Vegas master-planned community became an outspoken participant in association affairs, serving on a sub-association board and running repeatedly for the master association board. He criticized the association's decision to continue its contracts with the community's developer, which had become its manager and operator, arguing the arrangements benefited the developer and the association at individual homeowners' expense. He made the statements at an open sub-association board meeting, in a pamphlet and letter distributed to the community in support of his candidacy, on his campaign website, and in a post on a neighborhood social network. The developer and its president and chief executive sued him for defamation and defamation per se. He moved to dismiss under Nevada's anti-SLAPP statute, and the district court held he had not met his threshold burden.

What the Court Held:

Reversed and remanded. Each of the statements was "made in direct connection with an issue of public interest in a place open to the public or in a public forum" under NRS 41.637(4). Association meetings are public forums for these purposes because the association parallels in almost every case the powers, duties and responsibilities of a municipal government, and because NRS 116.31085 gives homeowners a statutory right to attend. A campaign pamphlet and letter distributed to the membership qualify even though the message is one-sided, because they are a vehicle for communicating about public matters to a large and interested community. The campaign website and the neighborhood-network post also qualified on this record, though the court declined to hold that every such post creates a public forum. The court remanded for the district court to consider the remaining element — whether the communications were made in good faith. Nothing in the opinion decides whether the criticisms were true or false.

What Happened:

The Colony was a 237-unit Longboat Key condominium resort hotel. On November 29, 1973, before the first unit sold, the association entered a ninety-nine-year recreational facilities lease covering the pool, tennis courts, locker and meeting rooms and clubhouse. The developer's two general partners signed for the lessor, and one of them signed as president of the association; developer-affiliated persons controlled the association's board through the end of 1977. Rent began at $153,000 a year subject to a consumer price index adjustment every ten years, rising to $351,000 in 1983, $510,000 in 1993 and $653,000 in 2003. The lease required the association to pay taxes, insurance and maintenance while imposing no obligation on the lessors, permitted liens against individual units for unpaid rent, and provided that no act or omission of the lessor could be construed as a breach. The association was administratively dissolved from 1980 to 1990. In practice the hotel partnership paid the rent from hotel revenue for thirty-five years and the association never paid it. Counsel for the association raised unconscionability in 1980; the parties litigated and settled repeatedly, including a 1986 mutual release, a 1990 reinstatement agreement and a 1994 settlement. When the partnership sued in 2008 the association filed Chapter 11, removed the action, and won a bankruptcy-court declaration that the lease was unconscionable, disallowing $2,228,487 in lease-rejection claims.

What the Court Held:

Reversed. The presumption of unconscionability under section 718.122, Fla. Stat., failed because the record contained no reliable appraisal of the leased property's value at the time of the initial sale of units. Procedural unconscionability was not established: a developer ordinarily contracts on the association's behalf before turnover because there is no one else to act for it, section 718.302, Fla. Stat., addresses owners' rights as to pre-turnover contracts, and no authority makes a pre-turnover contract per se procedurally unconscionable; the record showed complete, prominent and repeated disclosure of the lease and no evidence of deceptive sales practices or unsophisticated purchasers. Substantive unconscionability likewise failed, the court finding the escalation formula ambiguous and never applied on a compounding basis, a ten-year adjustment interval that lags inflation, and a 1994 settlement clarifying the formula. Independently, the association had known of the unconscionability theory since 1980, failed to assert it through more than a decade of litigation, and repeatedly ratified and affirmed the lease, so waiver, release and laches barred the defense. The district court reversed the bankruptcy court's judgment and set further proceedings on the form of remedy.