The dissent, which is worth knowing about

“I believe Savannah Place's actions constitute a continuing tort because the presence of the kiosk is overt, persistent, and ongoing.”

Judge Hunter's theory would not have made the claim contractual; it would have kept the one-year period from expiring. A continuing-tort argument is the obvious route for the next Louisiana owner in this position, and one member of the panel accepted it.

The distinction that shows what a ten-year claim looks like

The court distinguished Southern Trace Property Owner's Ass'n v. Williams, 52,653 (La. App. 2 Cir. 9/25/19), 280 So. 3d 826, where the ten-year personal-action period applied because the community documents created an express personal obligation to pay dues.

That is the working test, stated as a practitioner would use it. Point to a specific obligation the documents impose — a duty to maintain, a duty to pay, a duty to act within a stated period — and you are in contract, with ten years. Complain about how the board exercised a discretion, and you are in tort, with one.

Why this is the first appellate application of the Planned Community Act

The opinion recognises the Act by name and applies two of its sections. On the hierarchy of authority:

“The statutory scheme established by the newly enacted LPCA makes clear that community or governing documents, such as the Declaration in the case sub judice, prevail and act as the force of law between the parties, except to the extent that the documents are silent. La. R.S. 9:1141.3, 2024 Rev. Comm.”

Note the citation: the 2024 Revision Comments, not a subsection. That is the right citation, and it is worth understanding why. The old Louisiana Homeowners Association Act said the suppletive rule expressly — its R.S. 9:1141.3(A) ended with the sentence “Only to the extent the community documents are silent shall the provisions of this Part apply.” Act 158 of 2024 struck that sentence. What survives is the structure of subsections (A), (G) and (H) plus the Revision Comments, which state that the Act “applies to existing planned communities only if, and to the extent that, their community documents fail to address matters covered by this Act.”

The court also applied the Act's enforcement and maintenance provisions: R.S. 9:1141.48, under which a declarant, association, lot owner “or any other person who has suffered actual damages may bring an action to enforce a right granted or obligation imposed by this SubPart”; and R.S. 9:1141.33, making the association “responsible for maintenance, repair, and replacement of the common areas and limited common areas.”²

The other Louisiana clock that is running

Since January 2026 there is also a sixty-day window that is shorter than anything in Horton. R.S. 9:1141.26(B)(9):

“All actions taken by the board of directors that do not comply with this Section are nevertheless deemed valid unless and until set aside by a court. A challenge to the validity of an action of the board of directors for failure to comply with this Section shall not be brought more than sixty days after the minutes of the meeting at which the action was taken are approved or notice of that action is provided to lot owners, whichever is later.”

So a Louisiana owner unhappy with a board decision now faces a layered set of deadlines: sixty days for a procedural challenge to how the meeting was run, one year for a claim about the decision itself if it sounds in tort, and ten years only if a specific documentary obligation was breached.

And an amendment challenge is shortest of all in effect: R.S. 9:1141.14(G) sets “a peremptive period of one year from the date that the amendment is filed for registry” — peremption, which is not interrupted or suspended.

What this means in practice, on both sides

For an owner: find the clause. A complaint that the board was unreasonable, or unwise, or unresponsive is a tort claim on a one-year fuse. A complaint that the board did not do a thing the declaration or the Act obliges it to do is something else.

For a board: the fiduciary-duty pleading is narrower than it was, but the Act has simultaneously given owners more specific obligations to point at — open meetings, notice, budget ratification, records, a mandatory complaint procedure, and a maintenance duty over common areas. Preamble language is not a duty; R.S. 9:1141.33 is.

What to watch next

Whether a writ application follows, which we could not establish. And whether the continuing-tort theory in Judge Hunter's dissent gets a second hearing in another circuit — it is the argument that would restore an owner's timeline in cases of exactly this shape.