2026-09-09 · Arkansas · Courts

An Arkansas couple were told by their property owners association that it “had no problem” with the pool they wanted to build and that they “did not need their approval.” Their neighbours sued, and an Arkansas court ordered the encroaching portions of the finished pool, retaining wall and deck removed.¹

That is the practical headline of Fritchie v. Hearne, and it is the part that bears on every Arkansas homeowner and every board. But the opinion also does something more technical and, over time, more consequential: it materially narrows the pro-landowner canon that Arkansas covenant disputes are usually said to turn on.

Strict construction is not the whole rule

Arkansas courts say, and keep saying, that restrictions on the use of land are not favoured and that doubts are resolved in favour of the free use of land. The Fritchies built their argument on it: the Ridgemont Estates bill of assurance and protective covenants set a 25-foot setback for “[a]ll dwellings and structures,” the instrument never defined “structure,” and an undefined term must therefore be construed against the restriction — so an in-ground pool is not a structure.

The Court of Appeals rejected the premise. Quoting the rule with its limitation attached: “The rule of strict construction is limited by the basic doctrine of taking the plain meaning of the language employed.” A term does not have to be defined in the instrument to escape strict construction. “Structure” carries a plain meaning — the court checked Black's Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) and Merriam-Webster — and it is “a broad, catch-all term.”

Two further things supported that reading. The covenants themselves used “structure” expansively elsewhere: synonymous with an outbuilding or storage shed in one paragraph, with a trailer, mobile home, tent, shack or barn in another, with a communication mast or tower in a third. And the neighbourhood Environmental Control Committee's Rules and Regulations — referenced in the covenants and enacted the same day — required construction plans showing “structure location on the site … [and] setbacks,” on a non-exhaustive list of items that expressly included swimming pools. As the court put it, the drafters “clearly provided examples of items they considered to be structures.”

1. Fritchie v. Hearne, 2025 Ark. App. 276 (Ark. Ct. App. Apr. 30, 2025) (No. CV-23-667) — slip opinion, full text ↩