Why water leaks between condominium units are so intractable

This litigation is a study in how a routine building failure becomes four-party litigation, and the shape is familiar to Georgia condominium owners.

Water travels down. The damage is in the lower unit; the source is usually above or in the common elements. Which means the first question — who pays — is a question about the boundary between unit and common element, and that boundary lives in the declaration.

Spinola sued three parties, which is the ordinary and sensible response: the upstairs owner, the association, and the management company. She could not know from the outside whether the water came from a fixture inside unit 2909 or from a common plumbing stack running through it.

The practical sequence for a Georgia owner before that stage:

• Establish the source in writing. A plumber's or restoration contractor's report identifying the origin, before repairs destroy the evidence.
• Read the declaration's maintenance boundary. Georgia declarations vary widely on where the unit stops. Pipes serving one unit are usually the owner's; pipes serving more than one are usually common elements.
• Notify the association promptly, in writing. If the source is a common element, delay in notification becomes the association's defence.
• Check both policies. The association's master policy and the owner's HO-6 both potentially respond, and a Georgia condominium association may not charge any one unit owner a deductible exceeding $5,000 per casualty loss under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107.

The lis pendens question, practically

A notice of lis pendens gives the world notice that title to specific property is the subject of pending litigation. It does not freeze the property, but it makes it effectively unsaleable, because no buyer takes free of the outcome.

After Spinola, the position in Georgia is:

• A lis pendens connected to a real pending action is privileged from a slander-of-title claim, whatever the filer's motive.
• The affected owner's route is a motion to cancel, argued on whether the action genuinely involves title to that property.
• That last point is the real limit. A lis pendens is proper where the litigation concerns title to the property. A damages claim for water intrusion is not obviously a claim about title to unit 2909, and that is the argument Akaranta had available irrespective of the counterclaim.

What the new statute offers, and what it does not

From 1 January 2027, Georgia's Chapter 43-17A gives an owner in Spinola's position two things she did not have.

Section 43-17A-7(2) entitles an owner, on written demand, to a copy of the association's certificate of insurance for coverage obtained for the owner's benefit “that may apply to a potential claim or submitted claim.” An owner with water damage can establish what the master policy covers before deciding whom to sue.²

Section 43-17A-5 lets any person residing in the development complain to the Secretary of State within 180 days of the association's action or inaction — a forum for the “the association will not fix the common-element pipe” grievance that does not require suing anybody.

What the statute does not do is resolve unit-to-unit disputes. A hearing officer's jurisdiction under § 43-17A-5 runs to the association's action or inaction, not to the neighbour upstairs. For that, Georgia condominium owners still have the courts — and, as Spinola confirms, a privileged but limited tool for keeping the property in place while they use them.

What to watch next

Nothing further in this case; the verdict is reversed. The wider thing to watch is whether Georgia associations begin adopting internal water-intrusion protocols — a written procedure for source identification, notification and cost allocation. It is the single cheapest way to keep a $10,000 leak from becoming a four-party lawsuit with a jury verdict and an appeal.