California Case Sounds Fantastic for Condos/HOAs, But It May Not Be Much Help

March 21, 2025

Tags: Dispute Resolution, HOA Common Areas

In this week's tip, we report on a December California appellate court case that brought good news to condos and HOAs—and add a warning.

The court upheld a trial court's decision in backing an HOA after owners got into a physical brawl that caused injuries, and the injured party sued the HOA and its management company for not preventing it.

While many of our experts like that the court took the HOA's side in this dispute, one of our California experts says the case is probably not as good for condos and HOAs as it looks at first glance.

The case, Woolard v. Regent Real Estate Services, was filed by an HOA owner against the Greenhouse Community Association and its management company, Regent Real Estate Services. The parties were two couples, each tenants in the condo association, who lived next door to each other.

In December 2019, the couples began arguing, and it escalated into a physical altercation. According to the court, the brawl went from punching and kicking to assault with a flashlight and then a stabbing.

One of the couples, Eric Smith and Stacy Thorne, sued the other couple, Eric Woolard and Breonna Hall. Woolard and Hall cross-complained against the condo association and its management company, claiming the physical altercation was the result of long-standing harassment by multiple neighbors, including the next-door neighbors Smith and Thorne, and the condo president. They sought indemnification, apportionment of fault, negligence, and interference with economic relations.

The condo association sought summary judgment—meaning a decision by the judge to end the case based on the written briefs before trial. It claimed it acted reasonably and that it didn't owe a duty of care to contact police or intervene in the dispute between the neighbors.

The court held that the condo association didn't breach any duty to the residents. “But what duty did they have other than calling the police, if there was potential or ongoing criminal activity? They do not tell us,” the court stated.

The court also held that the condo association had a lower duty of care to the plaintiffs because they were tenants, not owners: “Further, there is the issue that Woolard and Hall were tenants, but not owners and members of the association. They are, accordingly, in a very limited relationship with Greenhouse…. They have no legal standing to maintain a complaint that Greenhouse failed to adequately enforce its own governing documents.”

The court finally stated: 

“There is simply no law to support Woolard and Hall's contentions that Regent and Greenhouse had some unspecified duty to do something to prevent what turned into an allegedly violent dispute. Imposing a duty on homeowners associations or their managing agents to intervene and attempt to resolve disputes between homeowners (or their tenants) would place an untenable burden on these entities.

Run by volunteers, they already have enough (and some would argue too much) authority and responsibility. Associations do not have police powers or subpoena power. They cannot compel owners, much less tenants of owners, to sit down and work out their differences, and they cannot adjudicate differences except in the limited context of violations of the association's governing documents.

There was evidence here…that the Association properly responded to complaints about violations of governing documents that it received. Imposing a duty under these facts would leave associations liable for the outcome of such disputes without the tools to prevent them.”

Reposted from HOALeader.com

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