The operational failure this describes

The sequence behind a case like this is one almost every long-lived Kentucky association will recognise.

A violation appears. The board documents it, sends a letter, and gets a response. Negotiations follow. A new board takes over and inherits a file. Someone suggests mediation. Counsel is consulted, then not instructed. The owner sells; the new owner inherits the structure and the argument. Years pass in correspondence, and the correspondence feels like enforcement.

It is not. Under Russell, letters do not stop the clock — filing does. An association that documents diligently and litigates never has produced a very good record of a right it can no longer exercise.

What this means for a Kentucky board

• Date every violation the day you find it. The date the structure was built or the use began is the fact the whole analysis turns on, and it becomes unknowable fast. Photograph it, minute it, and keep the date.
• Decide within a defined period whether you will sue. Five years sounds generous and is not, against a violation discovered in year three of a dispute that has already been running.
• Treat old structures differently from new ones. A deck built in 2001 and a deck built last spring are legally different problems, and a board that sends both owners the same letter is misjudging one of them.
• Know that the bar is asymmetric. Limitations protects the owner who has already built. It does nothing for an owner planning to build now, and it does not license fresh violations — a point that matters, because in April 2026 the Court of Appeals enforced a newly adopted architectural amendment against new construction notwithstanding years of earlier non-compliance elsewhere.
• Do not let “we are still discussing it” be the file's only entry for a year. If a board genuinely wants to preserve the option, the option has an expiry date.

The tension a board has to hold

Read together, Kentucky's recent decisions leave associations in a position that is coherent but demanding.

Old violations may become permanently unenforceable through limitations, whatever the covenant says. Yet the covenant itself survives, and a properly adopted amendment can restore a standard going forward without being defeated by the very non-compliance that produced it. And a bare approval requirement remains enforceable against anyone building today even where dozens of non-conforming structures already stand.

So the practical answer for a community that has drifted is rarely litigation over what is already built. It is to stop the drift prospectively — by amendment where the standard needs restating, and by prompt, dated enforcement against anything new — and to accept that some of what stands has passed out of reach.

That is an unwelcome conclusion for a board that feels obliged to treat every owner identically. It is also the one the statute of limitations produces, and it is better decided deliberately than discovered in a motion to dismiss.

Two limits on this decision

It is unpublished, and so under the Rules of Appellate Procedure is not binding and may be cited only in limited circumstances. And the opinion applies KRS 413.120 to a deed restriction; it is not a ruling about an association's action to collect assessments, which is a different claim with its own limitations analysis. It is not a five-year rule for everything a board might sue about.

What to watch next

The decision was rendered on 7 August 2026, so the windows for rehearing and for a motion for discretionary review have recently closed or are closing, and the case does not appear on the Supreme Court of Kentucky's list of cases in which discretionary review has been granted as last updated on 24 August 2026.

A published Kentucky decision applying KRS 413.120 to covenant enforcement would be genuinely useful, because the point is one circuit courts will now be asked to apply on the strength of an opinion that binds nobody. None is known to be pending.