ALLEN v. ARLINGTON: 14 CVS 17863
Dec 30, 2016OUTCOME: Judgment in favor of client at trial level and upheld by court of appeals
Problem: You buy a condomininum unit with two parking spaces. Eight years later, the homeowners’ association sends you a letter demanding that you “give back” one of the spaces, because it never sho ... uld have been sold to you in the first place–even though you’ve been parking both spaces all that time. Solution: You file a lawsuit claiming adverse possession under color of title and trespass. Result: We tried this case to a jury in Mecklenburg County Superior Court in the summer of 2015. The homeowners’ association defended itself on the grounds that there was no specific deed of that second parking space to our clients. But we told the jury that it could cobble together the deed for the condominium, the condominium declaration and the contract for sale of the parking space to find that title to the second space had passed to our clients–and the jury agreed. But It Wasn’t Quite Over: Despite the jury verdict, the homeowners’ association wasn’t ready to quit and let our clients park where they always had. Instead the HOA appealed, claiming that color of title was lacking because the deed did not purport to convey the parking space, and didn’t contain an adequate description of the parking space. But the court of appeals disagreed. It held that “in the context of a conveyance of a condominium unit, some property rights stem from the recorded declaration that created the condominium, not from the deed conveying the individual unit.” As a result, our clients’ established their right to the second parking space by adverse possession–meaning by contininuing to park there for seven years under the belief that they had the legal right to do so.
