After two-years of litigation, Fort Lauderdale East Partner, Craig Minko, and Associate, Carolina Machin, recently secured a full judgment on the pleadings in a complex community association dispute involving the scope of financial obligations under inter-association governing documents, and are now seeking to recover over $200,000 in prevailing party attorneys’ fees alone.
The Plaintiff is a master community association that operates and maintains certain elements in a multi-condominium community. They relentlessly pursued claims seeking to impose guarantor liability on our client, a sub-association that consists of 286 units, for master assessments owed to the Plaintiff by our client’s unit owners.
The Plaintiff based its claims on decades of our client’s course of conduct in paying the full amount of master assessments owed by its unit owners. For years, our client was paying all of the assessments to the Plaintiff, whether its unit owners paid the assessments or not, essentially acting as a guarantor for its unit owners, drawing on its own funds to make up for any deficit. Our client’s Board of Directors, however, ultimately determined that based on plain reading of the Plaintiff master association’s governing documents, our client was not required to pay the total amount of master assessments owed by its unit owners, but only to remit what was collected. Based on our client’s new position, the Plaintiff initiated litigation.
After years of litigation, Mr. Minko and Ms. Machin successfully argued the Plaintiff master association’s governing documents were clear and it was not our client’s responsibility to act as guarantor for their unit owners. Additionally, they argued that imposing such liability on the client would require the Court to rewrite unambiguous contractual provisions in violation of Florida law.
The Court agreed, and in a detailed 11-page order, entered judgment in favor of the client on all claims, including its counterclaim for damages. It also reserved jurisdiction to determine the amount of damages and attorneys’ fees owed to the client.
The Court has since denied the Plaintiff master association’s motion for rehearing, and our team is now seeking to recover over $200,000 from the Plaintiff master association in prevailing party fees alone, in addition to damages.
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