Why this bites hardest in older high-rise buildings

The two decisions land in exactly the buildings least able to answer the question. In an ageing Florida condominium with a documented history of common-element pipe failures, the existence of that history is itself a defence for the owner — it is the alternative explanation the association must exclude.

And the association's usual proof is precisely what did not work here: the property manager's testimony plus maintenance records. That is not causation evidence; it is a narrative into which causation has to be inferred, and the court declined to stack inferences to get there.

What proof actually looks like

For an association pursuing a chargeback or a damage claim against an owner:

• Contemporaneous photographs and video of the source, not of the damage. Damage photographs establish loss, not causation.
• Leak-detection evidence — moisture mapping, pressure testing, camera inspection of the stack. This is the evidence that distinguishes a unit appliance from a common-element line, and it has to be gathered while the leak is live.
• An engineer or plumber who can state a source, not a manager who can describe a response.
• Exclusion evidence: what was inspected, what was ruled out, and how. The court's language is about ruling out the common-element pipes; a record that never considered them cannot rule them out.
• Business records that stand on their own. The hearsay-within-business-records point is a live limit on invoices and third-party reports offered through a manager.

For an owner claiming against the association, the mirror applies: an unexplained wastewater intrusion is not proof that the stack failed, and the association's maintenance history is a starting point rather than a conclusion.

Get the maintenance boundary right first

Underneath both cases is a documentary question that decides many of them before evidence is gathered: where does the unit end and the common element begin?

That line comes from the declaration, and it varies. Some declarations run unit responsibility to the wall surface; others to the first joint or valve; others allocate specific systems expressly. A board that pursues an owner without first establishing that the failed component was the owner's responsibility under the declaration has a problem no amount of leak-detection evidence will solve.

The insurance dimension, which is where most of this is really fought

Section 718.111(11)(a) now provides that “every condominium association shall have adequate property insurance as determined under this paragraph, regardless of any requirement in the declaration of condominium,” and that replacement cost “must be determined at least once every 3 years, at minimum” by independent appraisal.

Two separate 2025 changes bear on water losses specifically. Section 718.113(5) was amended so that a unit owner “is not responsible for the cost of any removal or reinstallation of hurricane protection… if its removal is necessary for the maintenance, repair, or replacement of other condominium property or association property for which the association is responsible” — and the old provision making such costs enforceable as an assessment was deleted outright. We confirmed against the current statute that subsection (5) now ends at paragraph (d).

The practical instruction: the association's ability to charge a repair cost back to an owner as a collectible assessment is narrower than it was, and where the statute has removed the chargeback the association is left with an ordinary damages claim — which is the claim Grandview Palace lost.

A note on both decisions' status

Each slip opinion carries the standard notation that it is not final until disposition of a timely filed motion for rehearing. Grandview Palace was decided six weeks ago and its rehearing window may only recently have closed. Confirm current status before relying on either in a live matter.

What to watch next

Neither decision creates a district conflict, and the burden they describe is orthodox civil procedure rather than association-specific doctrine. What makes them worth tracking is volume: water intrusion is the most common physical dispute in Florida condominiums, and two published decisions in five weeks setting the same evidentiary bar is a signal about how these cases are being tried.

Watch also for whether the reasoning reaches milestone-driven repairs. As buildings open walls to address structural findings, the question of what was already failing behind them — and who pays — becomes the next iteration of the same argument.