Delaware Supreme Court backs a commercial-vehicle covenant and wipes out the HOA's fines
Delaware Supreme Court backs a commercial-vehicle covenant and wipes out the HOA's fines
2026-08-20 · Delaware · Courts
A Delaware association can be entirely right about its covenant and still walk away with nothing. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed on December 3, 2025 that “commercial vehicle” is a precise enough term to enforce — in a case where the trial court had already ordered every accrued fine and legal charge struck from the association's books.
Mousley v. Vincent Overlook Homeowners Association, Inc. was decided in the Superior Court by Resident Judge Craig A. Karsnitz on February 28, 2025, and affirmed by the Supreme Court (No. 119, 2025) on the basis of that opinion.12 It is the only Delaware Supreme Court affirmance on covenant interpretation in the current window.
The dispute
A master plumber living in Vincent Overlook, in Milton, parked his work truck in his own driveway. The truck was commercially registered and commercially insured. It carried no lettering and no racks. The community's declaration bars parking a “commercial vehicle” anywhere other than inside an enclosed garage.
The association issued three violation notices, held a hearing, imposed $50-per-day fines, cut off his access to community amenities, and threatened a lien under DUCIOA.
What the court held on the covenant
The term survived. The Superior Court restated Delaware's interpretive framework in full: an ambiguous covenant is construed to limit the restriction; ambiguities resolve in favour of the owner and against the association; a covenant resting on “purely subjective criteria” is unenforceable. But the mere existence of arguable alternative readings does not make a term ambiguous. In the court's formulation, “the term ‘commercial vehicle’ is no more ambiguous than the term ‘solid surface’” upheld in Canal Corkran v. Petrone.
The selective-enforcement defence also failed. The association had cited three other vehicles under the same provision, which was enough to show it was not singling this owner out.
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Related Delaware HOA Topics
- Mousley v. Vincent Overlook Homeowners Association, Inc., C.A. No. S23C-10-027 CAK (Del. Super. Feb. 28, 2025) (Karsnitz, R.J.) ↩
- Mousley v. Vincent Overlook Homeowners Association, Inc., No. 119, 2025 (Del. Dec. 3, 2025) (Griffiths, J.) — affirmed on the basis of the Superior Court opinion ↩
- 25 Del. C. ch. 81, subch. IV — Protection of Purchasers (§ 81-417, enforcement and attorneys' fees) ↩
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