Grossman v. Park Fort Washington Association (2012)

In our recent blog post entitled "Are Attorney's Fees for ADR Recoverable?", we touched briefly on the recently decided case of Grossman v. Park Fort Washington Association (2012) which affirmed an award of pre-litigation attorneys' fees (fees incurred in participating in ADR) to the Plaintiff homeowners after they had prevailed in a lawsuit against their HOA. 

The Defendant HOA objected to the award based on its argument that Civil Code Section 1354(c) did not authorize awarding pre-litigation attorneys' fees because such fees were not incurred as part of the "action" (the lawsuit) to enforce the governing documents. However, the appellate court disagreed with the HOA, noting several key points...

Click here to continue reading our blogpost entitled:  

"Recovering Pre-Litigation Attorneys' Fees in HOA Disputes"

California's 1st District Court of Appeal recently ruled that "design professionals" may be liable under both common law and Senate Bill No. 800 ("SB 800") to third party purchasers for construction defects.

In Beacon Residential Community Association v. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP et al., the Defendants ( "Architects") had performed architectural and engineering services, as well as construction administration and construction contract management, for a 595 unit condominium project located in San Francisco. The plaintiff homeowners association ("HOA") alleged that multiple construction defects in the project were caused in part by negligent architectural and engineering design. Included in those defects was the presence of "solar heat gain" allegedly caused by the Architects' approval of cheap and non-functional windows paired with a defective design that failed to provide for adequate ventilation within the units. During periods of high temperatures, the solar heat gain had rendered many of the units "uninhabitable, unhealthy and unsafe..."

Click here to continue reading our blogpost entitled: 

"Turning up the Heat on Residential Design Professionals"

Civil Code Section 1360 generally requires HOAs to allow a disabled owner to, at the owner's expense, make modifications to the owner's unit and potentially to the HOA's common areas in order to accommodate the owner's disability. When a HOA receives a request for an accommodation, what steps can and should the HOA take to verify the owner's disability and to determine whether or not the owner is indeed entitled to the accommodation?

We have published a new library article that address three questions which may be useful to a HOA in this regard...

Click here to read our library article entitled:  

"Responding to Requests for Accommodation"

The problems posed by second-hand smoke have become a burning issue for California HOAs, expecially condominium developments. A HOA typically does have the authority to adopt operating rules that prohibit smoking in common areas and exclusive use common areas; however, those rules may be insufficient to address problems posed by second-hand smoke emanating from inside an owner's unit. Prohibiting that type of activity generally requires language to that effect contained in the HOA's recorded CC&Rs. Where there is no such language, HOAs often refuse to get involved and opt to treat those situations as a "neighbor-to-neighbor" disputes.

However, we have written before about how a HOA may have an obligation to enforce the nuisance provisions contained in its CC&Rs to address problems posed by smoking within units. An Orange County jury recently affirmed this fact in the first ruling of its kind in California...

Click here to continue reading our blogpost entitled: 

"HOA Gets 'Smoked' in Nuisance Enforcement Case"

Our blog is updated weekly with mini articles on an array of HOA legal topics and new case law.  We encourage Boards and Managers to send us questions online for our attorneys to answer on our blog.  

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