2026-09-10 · Georgia · Courts

What happened. Georgia has a little-known statutory escape hatch for owners whose association has stopped functioning. On 16 June 2026, the Court of Appeals construed it in detail for the first time — and the owners who invoked it lost.

Boaz v. Thirteen Hundred on Lake Nottely Property Owners Association, Inc., No. A26A0455. Pipkin, J., with Dillard, P.J., and Gobeil, J., concurring. Published; affirmed.¹

The problem the owners had

Four owners on Lake Nottely sued their association directly for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, tortious interference, defamation, punitive damages and fees — and asked the court to dissolve the association and remove the board.

The association moved to dismiss for want of jurisdiction: the claims were derivative, the declaration never made an affirmative election to be governed by the POA Act, so the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code's derivative-action gate at O.C.G.A. § 14-3-741 applied.

That gate requires a director, members holding 5% or more of voting power, or 50 or more members. The owners conceded they could satisfy none of it.

The statute they turned to instead

They argued that O.C.G.A. § 44-5-60(d)(5) is a statutory carve-out giving individual standing. It is a genuinely useful provision that few Georgia owners know exists.

Subsection (d)(5)(A) lists six governance failures:

• failure to incorporate or to maintain the corporate registration;
• failure to appoint directors and elect officers;
• failure to maintain and produce a director and officer list on written request;
• failure to call member meetings;
• failure to prepare an annual budget and assessment and distribute it within 30 days of the start of the fiscal year; and
• failure to pay property taxes on common property for two or more years.

Subsection (d)(5)(B) then gives a 30-day cure notice, after which:

“any plot owner… shall have standing individually, and not solely through a derivative action, to institute an action… in order to obtain declaratory judgment to grant the plot owner or owners control of the entity by ordering an election and setting the terms thereof, or issuing any other orders appropriate to transfer control of the entity.”

Why they still lost

On the remedy, not the standing theory. The court wrote:

“Assuming without deciding that OCGA § 44-5-60(d)(5)(B) allows plot owners to bring a direct action… the trial court's dismissal of Appellants' action was proper because Appellants failed to establish they had standing, even under this statute. Indeed, Appellants did not seek a declaratory judgment requesting a new election or transfer of control as provided for by the statute; instead, they sought to have the entire Association dissolved and declared illegal, remedies for which the statute does not provide.”

The court disagreed with the trial court's reasoning and affirmed as right for any reason.

1. Boaz v. Thirteen Hundred on Lake Nottely Property Owners Association, Inc., No. A26A0455 (Ga. Ct. App. 16 June 2026) — slip opinion ↩
2. St. Michael's Bay Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Hadden-Kaser, No. A26A0490 (Ga. Ct. App. 25 June 2026) — slip opinion ↩
3. Senate Bill 406, as passed (26 LC 49 2879S) — signed copy, Office of the Governor ↩