Connecticut court: an owner barred from defending a lien foreclosure can still sue the association later
Connecticut court: an owner barred from defending a lien foreclosure can still sue the association later
2026-09-09 · Connecticut · Courts
A Connecticut unit owner who could not raise his claims in his association's foreclosure action is not barred from bringing them in a separate lawsuit afterwards, the Appellate Court held in a decision officially released May 5, 2026. The judgment dismissing his case on res judicata grounds was reversed.1
The ruling closes a gap that had been open in Connecticut practice for fourteen years, and it closes it against associations.
What happened
Akinyele v. Huntington Condominium Assn., Inc., AC 47624, was argued September 25, 2025 and decided by a unanimous panel of Moll, Clark and Wilson, Js., in an opinion by Judge Moll.1
The association sued the owner in 2018 to foreclose its statutory lien under § 47-258 for unpaid common charges, late fees and attorney's fees. The owner twice moved to amend and add a counterclaim; the trial court refused both times, once on timeliness grounds. He then brought a separate action against the association for breach of contract, breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, and negligence. The trial court dismissed that separate action as barred by res judicata — reasoning he should have raised those claims in the foreclosure.
The rule that created the problem
Connecticut law does not permit a unit owner to raise these claims inside a common-charge foreclosure. As the court restated it:
“special defenses and counterclaims cannot be maintained by condominium unit owners in actions against them by condominium associations to foreclose statutory liens on the basis of failure to pay common charges; instead, such claims must be brought in separate actions.”1
That rule comes from Coach Run Condominium, Inc. v. Furniss, 136 Conn. App. 698 (2012), building on Congress Street Condominium Assn., Inc. v. Anderson, 132 Conn. App. 536 (2011). Its rationale is the association's cash flow — protection that “would be jeopardized if any condominium unit owner could withhold payment pending the resolution of individual complaints or disagreements regarding the nature and extent of services rendered by the condominium.”1
The holding
The court held that a preclusion doctrine cannot punish an owner for failing to do what the law forbade. The owner was
“unable, as a matter of law, to bring his claims against the defendant in the prior foreclosure action and, thus, he did not have an opportunity to litigate fully those claims; accordingly, this court reversed the trial court's judgment of dismissal.”1
Why this matters more than it looks
Before Akinyele, an association could hold both ends of the rope. In the foreclosure it could invoke Coach Run to keep the owner's grievances out. Afterwards it could invoke res judicata to argue those same grievances were waived because they were not raised. The Appellate Court has now held that both positions cannot be held at once.
For associations this removes a defence that had real settlement value. For owners it means a complaint about maintenance, services, or the association's conduct survives the foreclosure judgment and can be brought on its own footing.
The distinction that survives — common charges versus fines
The preclusion rule Akinyele works from is narrower than it is often described. It applies to liens based on unpaid common charges. The Congress Street line distinguishes liens based on unpaid fines, where defences and counterclaims are not foreclosed in the same way.
That distinction is worth checking before an association files. A lien that mixes assessments with fines is not obviously the same creature as one built on common charges alone, and the procedural advantage the association is relying on may not extend to the whole of it.
What this means for boards and managers
The foreclosure is no longer the end of the exposure. A collection action that produces a judgment has not resolved the owner's separate claims, and an association that treats the file as closed on the day of the foreclosure judgment may be surprised.
Attorney's fee exposure runs in both directions. The claims in Akinyele — contract, good faith and fair dealing, negligence — are ordinary civil claims tried on the merits, without the procedural shelter the association enjoys in the foreclosure itself.
Document the service dispute while it is live. Where an owner stops paying because of a maintenance or services grievance, the association will win the foreclosure on the strength of the rule. The grievance itself is then litigated later, when memories and records are worse. Associations that keep contemporaneous records of the complaint and their response are in materially better shape in the second action.
The statutory footnote worth noticing
In footnote 12 the court records that “[s]ince the events underlying this appeal, the legislature has amended § 47-257 (g) in ways that have no bearing on the merits of the present case. See Public Acts 2025, No. 25-73, § 9.”1
Section 47-257(g) is CIOA's no-waiver rule — no owner is exempt from common expense liability by waiving use of the common elements or abandoning the unit. Public Act 25-73 rewrote it in the negative and, in the same section, added the new subsection (h) allocating an owner's renovation-driven cost increases back to that owner's unit. The court flags the amendment precisely because it does not affect the case, but it is a useful confirmation of where the current text of § 47-257 comes from.
What to watch next
The first question is whether the Supreme Court is asked to take it. Akinyele is a published Appellate Court decision and therefore binding, but the interaction between Coach Run and preclusion is exactly the kind of issue that draws a certification petition.
The second is legislative. In the 2025 session House Bill 6158 proposed permitting a unit owner to assert a special defence against a claim of nonpayment of a common expense assessment in defined circumstances — a direct legislative answer to the Coach Run rule. It died in the Judiciary Committee without a hearing.3 Akinyele resolves the preclusion half of the problem without touching the underlying bar.
Related Connecticut HOA Topics
- Akinyele v. Huntington Condominium Assn., Inc., AC 47624, 238 Conn. App. 824 — slip opinion, Connecticut Appellate Court (officially released May 5, 2026) ↩
- Connecticut Law Journal, May 5, 2026 — official release ↩
- HB 6158 (2025), special defense against a common expense assessment claim — died in the Judiciary Committee ↩
- Public Act No. 25-73, § 9 — the § 47-257 amendment cited in the opinion's footnote 12 ↩
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