2026-09-10 · Massachusetts · Courts

What happened. The Massachusetts Land Court held that a condominium board's discretionary architectural decision gets no absolute protection under either the business judgment rule or a reasonableness standard when the decision is arbitrary, internally inconsistent, or unsupported by facts — and ordered the board to grant the owner's request.

Feldman v. Sanctuary Condominium Association, Land Court docket 24 MISC 000298 (Vhay, J.), was decided in February 2026.¹

The facts

• Debra Feldman bought a unit at the Sanctuary Condominium in Salem — 172 townhomes — in 1987.
• Hers is the only unit with an exterior kitchen door, and it caused recurring water intrusion and structural rot.
• Over roughly 37 years she asked repeatedly, at her own expense, to wall up the doorway.
• The board refused, most recently in 2022, on the ground that the work would create future maintenance costs.

What the court found

The board's stated reason did not survive contact with the facts. The court found the work would eliminate the recurring rot-repair expense rather than create a new one.

The board had also approved comparable exterior modifications for other units, which the court treated as evidence of inconsistency.

The standard of review question

The court declined to resolve which standard governs a board's discretionary decisions, and said so directly:

“The Court needn't decide which standard controls board decisions… the Board's 2022 denial fails every test described above.”

The governing instrument was §9(b) of the master deed, covering architectural and structural-integrity preservation. Judgment entered for the owner, with a remand instructing the board to permit the work.

1. Moriarty Bielan & Malloy, discretionary decisions of a condominium board do not receive absolute protection (Feldman case note) ↩
2. Moriarty Bielan & Malloy, check the condominium governing documents (Kellett v. Caron case note) ↩