REVERSES REFORMATION OF HOA DECLARATION | Key Points

Updated: Mar 21

Last month Florida’s Second DCA reversed a judgment which granted the Villages of Bloomingdale Homeowners Association’s (the Association) motion to reform its declaration to encompass residential properties that were constructed and sold after the declaration was recorded and which properties were not originally encumbered by the declaration. Hogg v. Villages of Bloomingdale I Homeowners Ass’n, Inc., No. 2D21-3724, 2023 WL 2542132, at *1 (Fla. 2d DCA Mar. 17, 2023).
The Association was successful at the trial level and obtained a judgment which reformed the declaration to include the properties constructed in the second and third phases of the Villages project. The trial court rejected the property owners’ statute of limitations § 95.11(2)(b) defense finding that statutory provision inapplicable to actions “to reform documents to adequate[ly] reflect the intentions of the parties.” The property owners appealed.
On appeal the Second DCA concluded that an action to reform a declaration was quite literally an action to enforce an obligation founded on a written instrument and therefore, based on the plain text of § 95.11(2)(b), the subject reformation action was intended by the legislature to be covered under the five-year statute of limitations. The DCA reversed the judgment which reformed the declaration and remanded the case for further proceedings.