Virginia Court Decision Demonstrates the Importance of HOA Boards and Homeowners Making Prudent Decisions Relative to Litigation

The Virginia Supreme Appellate Court decision in Lambert v. Sea Oats Condo. Ass’n, Inc. that we reported on April 21, 2017, is a prime example of how important it is for those who are contemplating becoming involved in making decisions relative to litigation to know what they are getting involved in and the high financial and non-financial costs of becoming embroiled in litigation that never has a certain end result.

The Lambert Decision

The Lambert case started out with a dispute between a homeowner and her homeowners association over who was responsible for the payment of $500, for the cost of repairing the entry door to the homeowner’s condominium unit. When the parties could not resolve the $500 dispute, they turned to the court system— a decision that had to have been motivated by emotion and not good sense. The case then went to trial in the general district court where the association prevailed. The unhappy homeowner then appealed to the circuit court which reversed the trial court’s decision, but did not award the homeowner her attorney’s fees as requested. The homeowner, upset with not having been awarded over $9,000 in attorney fees that she had incurred in pursuing the $500 dispute, then appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The appellate court ruled that the lower court’s decision on the amount of attorney fees that should have been awarded was incorrect but, rather than award a specific amount for the attorney fees, sent the case back to the original trial court for a determination of the correct amount of attorney fees to be awarded to the homeowner based on factors that had been outlined by the reviewing court. Thus, after each side had incurred thousands of dollars in legal fees, the $500 battle between the homeowner and the association had still not been fully resolved at the time that the decision by the Supreme Court of Appeals had been reported.