Condo Media - June 2021 - 34
Insights from local
experts and executives
The Region
this issue:
[34] Massachusetts [36] Maine [38] New Hampshire [40] Rhode Island
MASSACHUSETTS
A New Look
at Old Law
Fines, Late Fees, and Assessments
[by Justin Magsarili, Esq.]
In a ruling earlier this year, the Massachusetts Appeals
Court issued an order that makes a subtle, but important,
shift in the law surrounding collections. For the most part,
condominium case law in Massachusetts has historically
been quite deferential to associations. The oft-cited cases of
Trustees of the Prince Condominium Trust v. Prosser, 412
Mass. 723 (1992), and Blood v. Edgar's, Inc., 36 Mess. App.
Ct. 402 (1994), have long been vital parts of condominium
attorneys' arsenals in contested collection cases. The Appeals
Court January 2021 ruling in Trustees of the 10 Porter Street
Condominium Trust v. Cerda, 2021 WL 28224 (Mass. App.
Ct. January 5, 2021) has stuck a small wedge into the tenets
of Prince and Blood.
Prince holds that unit owners cannot refuse to pay lawful
common expense assessments as a form of protest or due to
assertion of some right to offset against those assessments.
The court in Blood expanded the Prince rule by applying it to
situations where a unit owner refuses to pay common expense
assessments because the owner claims that the common
expense assessments are unlawful. Neither of these cases
got specific about exactly what types of assessments must be
paid under protest before raising a judicial challenge to their
lawfulness, a fact that the 10 Porter Street court grasped onto.
The 10 Porter Street court took the opportunity to distinguish
fines and late fees from other types of assessments by deciding that fines and late fees are not necessary to maintain the
financial stability of the association and thus are not deserving
of the same kind of deference afforded to budgeted common
expense assessments.
34
CONDOMEDIA June 2021
Condo Media - June 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - June 2021
Contents
Condo Media - June 2021 - Cover1
Condo Media - June 2021 - Cover2
Condo Media - June 2021 - Contents
Condo Media - June 2021 - 2
Condo Media - June 2021 - 3
Condo Media - June 2021 - 4
Condo Media - June 2021 - 5
Condo Media - June 2021 - 6
Condo Media - June 2021 - 7
Condo Media - June 2021 - 8
Condo Media - June 2021 - 9
Condo Media - June 2021 - 10
Condo Media - June 2021 - 11
Condo Media - June 2021 - 12
Condo Media - June 2021 - 13
Condo Media - June 2021 - 14
Condo Media - June 2021 - 15
Condo Media - June 2021 - 16
Condo Media - June 2021 - 17
Condo Media - June 2021 - 18
Condo Media - June 2021 - 19
Condo Media - June 2021 - 20
Condo Media - June 2021 - 21
Condo Media - June 2021 - 22
Condo Media - June 2021 - 23
Condo Media - June 2021 - 24
Condo Media - June 2021 - 25
Condo Media - June 2021 - 26
Condo Media - June 2021 - 27
Condo Media - June 2021 - 28
Condo Media - June 2021 - 29
Condo Media - June 2021 - 30
Condo Media - June 2021 - 31
Condo Media - June 2021 - 32
Condo Media - June 2021 - 33
Condo Media - June 2021 - 34
Condo Media - June 2021 - 35
Condo Media - June 2021 - 36
Condo Media - June 2021 - 37
Condo Media - June 2021 - 38
Condo Media - June 2021 - 39
Condo Media - June 2021 - 40
Condo Media - June 2021 - 41
Condo Media - June 2021 - 42
Condo Media - June 2021 - 43
Condo Media - June 2021 - 44
Condo Media - June 2021 - 45
Condo Media - June 2021 - 46
Condo Media - June 2021 - 47
Condo Media - June 2021 - 48
Condo Media - June 2021 - Cover3
Condo Media - June 2021 - Cover4
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