2026-09-07 · Alaska · Courts

The Alaska Supreme Court has vacated a $72,800 attorney-fee award to a condominium association, holding that once a unit owner identified specific billing entries the association had not separated out, the burden fell on the association to prove which of its fees belonged to which case — and that its lawyers' affidavits did not discharge that burden.

Guditz v. Lakeside North Condominium Home Owners Association, Opinion No. 7803, was decided February 27, 2026. Chief Justice Carney wrote for a unanimous court; the case was submitted on the briefs without oral argument.¹

Two cases, and the association lost one of them

The detail that drives the decision is that this was not one lawsuit but two, consolidated in Anchorage Superior Court before Judge Andrew Guidi.

Lakeside North sued to foreclose on Ralph Guditz's unit over unpaid assessments. The association lost. In June 2023 the superior court entered final judgment for Guditz in the foreclosure case, and awarded him $15,000 in enhanced attorney's fees. Neither side appealed that.

Guditz had also brought a countersuit against the association over common-area maintenance and alleged misappropriation of funds. That one he lost. It went to trial in July 2024 and was dismissed in the association's favor on the second day.

Lakeside then sought its fees as prevailing party on the countersuit, claiming roughly $203,000 in total billings. The superior court awarded $72,800, discounting the request by ten percent for the inefficiency of the association having changed counsel three times.

What the court held

The problem was that the association's billing records did not distinguish work done on the foreclosure case — where it was the losing party and entitled to nothing — from work done defending the countersuit, where it had prevailed.

Guditz pointed to specific entries. The Supreme Court held that this shifted the burden, and that the association had to meet it: “by failing to require Lakeside to rebut Guditz's proof that it had not segregated its fees for the foreclosure case from those incurred in connection with the countersuit, the court failed to require Lakeside to meet its burden of proof. This was an abuse of discretion.”

The court also treated the trial judge's own ten-percent discount as telling against the award: a reduction for billing inefficiency was, in effect, an implicit finding that the association had not carried its burden.

The fee award was vacated and the case remanded.

1. Guditz v. Lakeside North Condominium Home Owners Association, Op. No. 7803, Supreme Court No. S-19267 (Alaska Feb. 27, 2026) — full slip opinion ↩
2. Alaska Appellate Courts case record, Supreme Court No. S-19267 (docket and disposition) ↩
3. Alaska Supreme Court published opinions listing, Alaska Court System ↩