2026-09-10 · Florida · Courts

What happened. Florida's Third District Court of Appeal decided two water-damage cases within five weeks of each other, and they are mirror images. In one, an association sued a unit owner and lost. In the other, an owner sued her association and lost. The reason was the same both times: the party bringing the claim could not prove where the water came from.

The association's case: Grandview Palace

The Grandview Palace Condominium Association, Inc. v. Judge, No. 3D25-0458, was filed on 29 July 2026 (Gooden, J., with Lindsey and Lobree, JJ.). The association sued a unit owner for breach of the declaration over water leaks it attributed to his washing machine and water heater. The trial court directed a verdict for the owner. The Third DCA affirmed.¹

“Because the Association failed to directly prove causation or rule out the common element pipes as the source of the leak, no proper view of the evidence can sustain a verdict in its favor.”

The court also refused to let the association build its case out of stacked inferences: “the jury could not pyramid upon that inference to reach the next inference,” because “proof that raises mere speculation, suspicion, surmise, or conjecture is not enough to sustain a plaintiff's burden of persuasion.”

The evidentiary record is instructive. The association's property manager conceded on cross-examination that he had no photographs of a leaking washing machine or water heater and had never seen water “shooting into the hallway.” The owner testified his appliances had never leaked since 2015, and that the association had opened walls on numerous floors to address common-element pipe leaks. The opinion also addresses the limits of hearsay within business records as a route to proving the association's documentary case.

The owner's case: Vera

Vera v. Parkwood Condominium Association, Inc., No. 3D24-2149, was filed on 24 June 2026 (Logue, J.). A unit owner sued her association in premises liability over wastewater spilling into her unit. Summary judgment for the association was affirmed.²

The owner bore the burden “of identifying facts that would support a reasonable inference that it was more likely than not that the wastewater spillage in her unit was due to a problem in the condominium's sanitary stack pipes rather than her wastewater pipes.”

Same question, opposite parties, same answer: whoever sues must locate the source.

1. The Grandview Palace Condominium Association, Inc. v. Judge, No. 3D25-0458 (Fla. 3d DCA 29 July 2026) ↩
2. Vera v. Parkwood Condominium Association, Inc., No. 3D24-2149 (Fla. 3d DCA 24 June 2026) ↩
3. s. 718.113, Fla. Stat. (2026) — confirming subsection (5) now ends at paragraph (d) ↩