The dispute behind it

Elk Creek Ranch, near Meeker, is a private fishing and hunting community. Its developer established it, lots went on sale in 2007, and each lot owner became a member of the Elk Creek Ranch Owners Association. The developer's principal also formed a separate company as the association's management company, and the family established a neighbouring ranch which in 2006 entered a long-term fishing lease giving association members the right to fish on that ranch's land.

In 2017 several individual members sued, alleging among other things that the developer failed to pay assessments owed to the association; that the management company breached its management agreement by failing to ensure those assessments were paid; that the developer's principal breached his fiduciary duties to the association; and that the neighbouring ranch breached the fishing lease and its implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by improperly restricting members' fishing access.

The association joined and became the sole plaintiff by the October 2020 trial. The court dismissed the assessments claim against the developer on limitations grounds. The jury found the management company breached the management agreement, the principal breached his fiduciary duties, and the neighbouring ranch breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing though not the lease's specific terms. After an earlier appeal, the district court granted the association a permanent injunction. This appeal is the fee fight that followed.

What these three holdings mean for a board

On finality: build the appellate calendar around every party's fee request. This is a trap that costs an association its appeal for reasons unrelated to the merits, and it is entirely avoidable once you know the rule. In a multi-party case, ask the court to set a single schedule that resolves all fee requests, so the finality date is knowable.

On “default”: read every fee-shifting clause the association is party to, and notice whether the operative word is defined. Where a clause uses “default” without defining it, a court may not import a narrower defined term from elsewhere in the instrument — and a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing can itself be a default. That is a meaningful expansion of what an association can recover fees for under leases, easements, amenity agreements and vendor contracts, which is a large share of the documents a Colorado community actually operates under.

On lodestar: check any large fee award against the association for the sequencing error. If the court acknowledged hours were excessive and then discounted by a percentage rather than excluding them before computing the lodestar, the award is vulnerable on appeal. On a $1.26 million award that is worth the review.

What this case is not

No CCIOA section was construed. The association's rights here ran through contract — the fishing lease's fee-shifting provision and the management agreement — not through statute. The opinion does not decide whether Elk Creek Ranch is a CCIOA common interest community.

That is worth stating plainly because it reflects the period's pattern: Colorado's appellate courts have been deciding association cases on contract, procedure and insurance, while the substantive CCIOA changes came from the legislature. A twenty-month sweep found no published Colorado appellate decision construing CCIOA's assessment-lien foreclosure, records-inspection or architectural-control provisions, and none applying the business judgment rule to an association board.

What would change the answer

A fee-shifting clause that does define “default” narrowly, or that expressly excludes implied-covenant breaches, produces a different result — which is an argument for reading the association's own clauses now rather than after a judgment. A single-party fee posture removes the finality holding. And a lodestar properly computed, by excluding unreasonable hours up front, survives.

One related procedural caution from the same division on the same day: in Bechtholdt v. Extraction Oil & Gas, Inc., 2026 COA 57, an appeal was dismissed because a district court had certified partial final judgment under C.R.C.P. 54(b) while a quiet title claim remained unresolved. A property owners' association was a named defendant-appellee there, though its conduct was not at issue. The lesson is the same as the first holding here: premature appeals get dismissed, and an association joined as a title defendant should not appeal a partial judgment while a quiet title claim is pending as to any party.