Park Place Condominiums Association, Inc. v. Lionel A. Edlam, Jr. et al. (2016)

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

In this action the plaintiff Park Place Condominium Association seeks to recover monthly condominium fees that it claims were due from the defendant unit owner Lionel Edlam.

This case was commenced in January of 2016.  The plaintiff alleges the defendant had failed to pay the monthly condominium fees for the months of September, October, November and December 2015.  Further, the plaintiff seeks payment for late fees, legal fees and costs of this foreclosure action.  The defendant filed an answer disputing the claims of the plaintiff and filed a special defense that he had filed complaints with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO).

In his affidavit opposing this motion for summary judgment, the defendant Edlam disputes that the September condominium fees were due and owing.  He asserts that he had a credit balance due to overpayments made by his mortgage servicer and by himself in October or November of 2014.

The affidavit submitted in support of this motion avers that the defendant's monthly condominium fees were not paid for September and October and that in November the matter was referred to the plaintiff's attorney to institute this foreclosure action.  Subsequent to the referral to attorney, the defendant tendered the October and November payments but he did not tender the late charges and did not tender any funds to cover the legal fees and costs the plaintiff incurred to collect the admittedly overdue monthly fees.  When the late tender of payments was returned to the defendant, further discussions ensued but no agreements were reached.  Monthly condominium fees continued to be unpaid.  In February and March of 2016, the defendant filed four complaints with the CHRO in which he asserted that the plaintiff and the property manager for the plaintiff had acted in a discriminatory fashion towards him because of his race.

The court has reviewed all of the affidavits in this case and it appears to the court that there are some facts as to which there is no genuine dispute and some facts as to which there is a genuine dispute.

The plaintiff and the defendant are in dispute as whether there were monthly condominium fees due from the defendant to the plaintiff on September 1, 2015.  The parties are in agreement that the defendant did not pay in a timely fashion the October and November condominium fees and did not tender the late charges that were due.  Thereafter rather than focusing on the initial cause of this dispute, whether or not September 1, 2015 condominium fees were due, the dispute grew to the present time where there are almost eight months of condominium fees, late charges, legal fees and costs that are in dispute.  While the defendant has at various times tendered partial payments, the plaintiff was within its rights to reject those partial payments without a fully agreed upon payment plan or resolution of the dispute about condominium fees.  While the dispute about homeowners' fees is a part and parcel of the complaint to the CHRO, there is no necessary linkage.  The defendant certainly can pursue those claims in the CHRO forum but the pursuit of those claims does not absolve him of the responsibility of paying the condominium fees in a timely fashion.

Since there are genuine disputes of material facts, the court must deny the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment.  The court notes that if the parties could ever agree on the amount of the monthly condominium fees, late charges, and legal costs then the parties could then leave to the court's discretion after argument the appropriate amount of legal fees that the plaintiff might be awarded in this action.  This would avoid the continued increase of legal expenses that would necessarily be entailed with a trial.

Cosgrove, J.

Cosgrove, Emmet L., J.