Alabama court voids a condo association's judgment and orders $36,584 returned
Alabama court voids a condo association's judgment and orders $36,584 returned
2026-09-09 · Alabama · Courts
An Alabama condominium association that collected $36,584.12 out of an owner's appeal bond has been ordered to give it back — not because the assessments were wrong, but because the trial court signed the judgment nine days too early in a sequence that had eight weeks left to run.
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals decided Ross v. West Wind Condominium Association, No. CL-2025-0534, on February 13, 2026, dismissing Howard Ross's appeal as taken from a void judgment and directing the trial court to vacate it.1 Presiding Judge Moore wrote for a unanimous court; Judges Edwards, Hanson, Fridy and Bowden concurred.
What the trial court did, and when
The underlying case is an ordinary one. West Wind sued Ross in Madison Circuit Court and won a judgment on September 19, 2023 for $29,267.29 in unpaid condominium dues and assessments. Ross appealed and posted a cash bond as security.
The appellate history is where the problem starts. On November 8, 2024 the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part. Ross applied for rehearing; the court granted it and, on February 7, 2025, issued a substituted opinion that reversed the judgment for unpaid assessments, affirmed the judgment for unpaid dues, and remanded with instructions that the trial court "recalculate the amount of its judgment." Ross then filed a second rehearing application, which was overruled on March 21, 2025. The certificate of judgment issued on April 9, 2025.
The trial court did not wait. On February 14, 2025 — one day after the substituted opinion, and 54 days before the certificate — it granted West Wind's motion and entered an amended judgment against Ross for "$29,721.83, plus interest[] and costs." On April 17, 2025 it ordered the circuit clerk to satisfy that amended judgment out of Ross's appeal bond, and on May 1, 2025 a check for $36,584.12 was disbursed.
Why that made the judgment void
The rule the court applied is short and absolute. "It is well settled that a trial court does not have jurisdiction to enter any order on remand until this court has entered its certificate of judgment," the opinion says, quoting Ex parte Wynn, 227 So. 3d 534, 535 (Ala. Civ. App. 2017).2
Because no certificate had issued on February 14, 2025, the amended judgment was void for lack of jurisdiction — not voidable, not merely erroneous. Everything built on it fell with it: "Because the trial court's February 14, 2025, amended judgment is void, its subsequent order to release funds from Ross's cash bond to West Wind, to the extent that that order is based on the trial court's February 14, 2025, amended judgment, is also void."
What the court actually ordered
A void judgment will not support an appeal, so the court dismissed Ross's appeal for lack of jurisdiction — but dismissal did not leave the association holding the money. The court dismissed "with instructions to the trial court to vacate its February 14, 2025, amended judgment and any subsequent orders it entered based on that amended judgment," and then added the sentence that matters to West Wind's balance sheet:
"West Wind is ordered to return the funds improperly released by the clerk to satisfy the judgment. See Rule 62(g), Ala. R. Civ. P."
The court also denied West Wind's request for an award of attorney's fees on appeal, and declined to reach Ross's remaining argument.
What it changes for boards and managers
Nothing in this decision says Ross does not owe money. The February 7, 2025 substituted opinion had already affirmed the judgment for unpaid dues; what was left was a recalculation the trial court still has to perform, this time with jurisdiction. The association's substantive collection position survived. Its cash did not.
Three operational points follow from the sequence, and none of them is about condominium law:
A remand is not effective when the opinion issues. It is effective when the certificate of judgment issues, and rehearing applications push that date out. In this case the gap between the substituted opinion and the certificate was two months, because a second rehearing application was filed and had to be overruled first. An association pressing for entry of a recalculated judgment inside that gap is pressing for a void one.
Executing against an appeal bond compounds the error. The bond exists precisely because the appeal is not over. Releasing it on the strength of a premature judgment converted a paperwork problem into a refund obligation, and the court cited Rule 62(g) — the rule preserving an appellate court's power to protect the parties' rights pending appeal — when ordering the money back.
Fee recovery is not automatic. West Wind asked for appellate attorney's fees and was refused. An association that has generated a second appeal by moving too early is not well positioned to have the owner pay for it.
Where this sits in Alabama collections practice
Alabama gives associations real collection tools — the assessment lien at Ala. Code § 35-20-12 for homeowners' associations, and the condominium lien machinery in the Uniform Condominium Act of 1991 — and this decision leaves all of them intact. What it illustrates is that the enforcement half of collections runs on the rules of civil procedure, not on the declaration, and that a jurisdictional defect does not get cured by the fact that the debt was real.
It is worth noting how long this has taken. The original judgment is from September 2023; the case has now produced two appellate opinions, three rehearing filings and one void judgment, and it goes back to Madison Circuit Court still needing the recalculation ordered in February 2025.
What to watch next
The case returns to the trial court to vacate the void orders and, presumably, to enter the recalculated judgment it was told to enter — this time after a certificate of judgment that has already issued. Whether West Wind has returned the $36,584.12, and whether the recalculated figure is closer to the affirmed dues than to the $29,721.83 the void judgment named, are matters of the trial-court record rather than the appellate one.
We have not located any subsequent history for CL-2025-0534, and the slip opinion carries the standard notice that it "is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance sheets of Southern Reporter."
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