The Court of Appeals recently returned a winning decision for our appeal in Executive Office Park of Durham Association, Inc. v Martin Rock. For those of you who have been reading our blog posts, you will recall that we originally won this case in a Court of Appeals decision back in April 2021. The opposing side appealed to the N.C. Supreme Court, which then reversed our victory on one of the two grounds that we had raised. Fortunately, as discussed in our prior post The Importance Of A Backup Plan, we had argued that the Court of Appeals should rule in our favor for either of two alternative reasons. The Court of Appeals did not even discuss our second reason, since it ruled for us on our first reason. When the N.C. Supreme Court disagreed, it returned the case to the Court of Appeals to consider for the first time our second reason. In this most recent decision the Court of Appeals again ruled in our favor. As a result, the order which allowed the condominium association to foreclose on our clients’ units was vacated.
Condominium associations, like homeowner associations, have developed a tremendous amount of power to foreclose on individual properties. With the help of their trade association and their lobbying powers, the condominium association in this case now benefits from an amendment to the relevant statute so that people in our client’s position will have even less power in the future. This case was a true David and Goliath fight! Fortunately for our client, our “backup plan” argument won the day.
The full opinion is available here: EOP v. Rock (II)