The phrase that did not save it

“Sole and absolute discretion” is boilerplate in Maryland architectural-review provisions, and this decision draws a line under what it does.

It goes to how a decision is made, not to who makes it. A body with sole and absolute discretion over the matters assigned to it still has only the matters assigned to it. Language about the breadth of discretion cannot transfer jurisdiction from one body to another, and a Maryland court reading unambiguous covenant text will not supply the transfer.

That is the practical exposure for boards. Most Maryland declarations divide review authority — an ARC for design and use questions, a board or declarant-successor for consents, easements and common-area matters. Where those lines have blurred in practice, as they do in mature communities with long-serving volunteers and overlapping committees, the party whose decision it actually was may not be the party who made it.

And the remedy is not a remand for the right body to decide. The jury treated the wrongful rejection as a breach and awarded damages.

The damages holding is the part with teeth

A $17 million verdict against a covenant enforcer is unusual enough that the damages reasoning matters as much as the liability finding. The court upheld two components and rejected the argument they overlapped:¹

• Lost return on investment to trial, and
• Increased financing cost caused by interest rates rising during the delay

The court held these were not duplicative, were present rather than future damages, and were proved with reasonable certainty.

The financing-cost element deserves attention from anyone advising a Maryland board. A wrongful refusal that delays a development is now demonstrably compensable by reference to what the money cost while the applicant waited — and in a rising-rate period that figure compounds without anyone doing anything. The longer a wrongful denial holds, the larger the claim grows on its own.

What it means for an ordinary association

Columbia is an outlier in scale. HRD is a corporate covenant enforcer in a planned community of more than 100,000 residents, and IMH was a commercial developer with a Town Center lot. Most Maryland architectural disputes are a homeowner, a fence and a $200 fine.

The doctrine does not scale down, but the risk does, and in two directions.

The authority question is identical at any size. A board that denies an application its ARC should have decided — or an ARC deciding something reserved to the membership — is exercising a power it does not hold. Nothing in the reasoning depends on the sums involved.

The exposure scales with what the applicant lost. A refused deck generates a small claim. A refused accessory dwelling unit in a Maryland market where local governments must permit ADUs from 1 October 2026, or a refused solar installation where Real Property § 2-119 now puts hard 5 percent and 10 percent numbers on unreasonable restriction, generates a quantifiable one.

This publication does not predict outcomes in individual disputes. The category-level point is that Maryland has just affirmed both halves of the exposure — that exceeding review authority is a breach, and that delay costs are recoverable with reasonable certainty.

The fee exposure, separately

Two unreported Maryland decisions from the same period show the more common version of the same risk, and both are worth knowing even though neither is precedent under Maryland Rule 1-104.

In Piney Narrows Yacht Haven Condominium Association, Inc. v. Corson, No. 0967, September Term 2024 (filed 23 December 2025), a condominium association that fought a unit owner over pressure-washing boats at the marina and lost was left with a two-thirds attorney-fee award against it of $118,531.55 plus costs, affirmed on a second appeal.²

Running the other way, Lee v. Mains Homeowners Association, Inc., No. 1535, September Term 2023 (filed 20 February 2025), affirmed an association's recovery of $3,300 in covenant fines together with $34,575 in attorney's fees for protracted collection.³

A fine of $3,300 producing a fee award ten times its size, and a use dispute producing a $118,531 award against the association, describe the same structural fact from both ends: in Maryland covenant litigation the fees routinely dwarf the underlying amount, and which side pays them is decided at the end.

What to watch next

Whether Howard Research gets cited for the authority point rather than the damages figure. A reported decision holding that a covenant enforcer breached by exercising an ARC's power is a tool for any Maryland owner whose application was refused by the wrong body, and it is now available in a year when no other Maryland appellate court addressed architectural review at all.

The legislature did nothing here. No dedicated architectural-review bill was filed in the 2026 session; the nearest measures were HB 1577, requiring owner approval for common-area alterations, and HB 1236, an ADU historic-district carve-out, and both died in House Economic Matters without a report.