Minnesota court: a common-element repair cannot be billed to two units
Minnesota court: a common-element repair cannot be billed to two units
2026-09-12 · Minnesota · Courts
What happened. The Minnesota Court of Appeals held that an association breached its declaration by specially assessing the entire cost of a common-element masonry repair against only the two units in the affected building.
Monica Mohn v. City Homes on Park Avenue Owners' Association, No. A24-1254, was filed 7 April 2025, affirming in part and reversing in part. It is nonprecedential — under Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c), persuasive authority only, not binding.1
The facts
Deck replacement at a 120-year-old duplex building, one of 19 buildings in a Minneapolis common interest community, exposed badly decayed brickwork. The association paid for emergency masonry repair, then by board resolution specially assessed the entire cost against only the two units in that building — reasoning that they were the “only units that will benefit.”
The holding on allocation
Under this declaration, the association may not allocate the cost of repairing a COMMON element to fewer than all units.
The discretion to charge fewer than all units exists for limited common elements, and for “common expenses” benefitting fewer than all units. But “common element” and “common expense” are not interchangeable terms, and the association breached the declaration by assessing common-element masonry solely against two units.
The two words the case turns on
The declaration provided that the association “shall be responsible for the maintenance, repair, alteration, improvements and replacement of the Common Elements and, to the extent determined appropriate by the Board, the Limited Common Elements.”
The provision the association relied on said: “The Association may assess any Common Expense benefitting fewer than all of the Units against the Units benefitted” — tracking Minn. Stat. § 515B.3-115(e)(1).
But “common expense” was defined as “expenditures made or liabilities incurred by or on behalf of the Association” — a broader category than “common element.” The board had read across from one defined term to the other, and the court would not let it.
The association's own document was used against it
The court leaned on the association's “Maintenance Responsibility Matrix”, which listed “siding—masonry” as an association responsibility funded from operating or reserve expense, while listing “deck” — a limited common element — as owner-assessment funded.
The owners won the contract point and lost the bad-faith claim
The second holding sets the ceiling on what an owner recovers from this kind of dispute.
The association did not breach the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, because that claim requires a showing of bad faith or an ulterior motive. Merely exercising contractual discretion — or making “an honest mistake regarding one's rights or duties” — is not bad faith. The court cited Minnwest Bank Central v. Flagship Properties, 689 N.W.2d 295, 303 (Minn. App. 2004).
So a board that gets the allocation wrong in good faith has breached the declaration and nothing more. For owners, that means the realistic remedy is reallocation, not damages for the board's conduct. For boards, it means an honest misreading is not costless — but it is not characterised as misconduct either.
The practical rule this produces
Minnesota boards routinely reason from benefit: who gets the value of this repair should pay for it. That instinct is not the test. The test is what the association's defined terms say, applied to the element being repaired.
A workable sequence before any building-specific special assessment:
1. Classify the element, from the declaration. Common element, limited common element, or unit. This is a documentary question with a documentary answer, and it is where the analysis either succeeds or fails.
2. Check whether the allocation power actually reaches that classification. Discretion to charge fewer than all units typically attaches to limited common elements and to common expenses. Read the declaration's own words rather than the statutory shorthand.
3. Read the maintenance matrix before relying on it. If the association has published a matrix, it is evidence of the agreed reading — and Mohn shows it can cut against the board. A matrix that is inconsistent with the declaration is worse than no matrix.
Minnesota courts treat declarations as contracts, interpreted under ordinary contract principles — Harkins v. Grant Park Association, 972 N.W.2d 381, 388 (Minn. 2022), and Swanson v. Parkway Estates Townhouse Association, 567 N.W.2d 767 (Minn. App. 1997).
Why this is the most useful assessment decision of the period
Because the fact pattern recurs constantly in Minnesota's older multi-building communities: a structure in one building fails, the repair is expensive, and every owner in the other eighteen buildings asks why they are paying for it.
The answer Mohn gives is that the question is not about fairness. If the masonry is a common element and the declaration makes the association responsible for common elements, the cost is a common expense of the association, and the fact that only two households live behind that wall does not change the classification.
The corollary is worth stating for owners: the same reasoning works the other way. Where a component is a limited common element, the discretion to charge the benefitted units is real, and an owner objecting to a limited-common-element assessment is arguing against the declaration rather than with it.
What Chapter 82 adds from January
Minnesota's HOA Bill of Rights does not change the allocation rule — it did not amend § 515B.3-115(e). But three of its provisions change how a decision like this gets made, from 1 January 2027:
The budget must circulate before the meeting. New subsection (k) in §§ 515B.3-115 and 515B.3-1151 requires the association to make the proposed budget available before the meeting at which it is discussed and approved.
Board meetings are open, with agendas and contracts published in advance, and owners may speak on any agenda item before action is taken. A resolution specially assessing two units is exactly such an item.
A free grievance track exists. Where the dispute is not a fine and not an alteration application — and an allocation dispute is neither — the board must allow the owner to present a grievance orally or in writing, must make a good-faith effort to resolve it, and must refer the owner to the state ombudsperson if it cannot. No fee may be charged.
None of that would have changed the answer in Mohn. It would have put the argument in front of the board before the resolution passed rather than after.
A note on what “nonprecedential” means here
Every Minnesota state-court decision on association law in this period is nonprecedential. No Minnesota Supreme Court decision and no published Court of Appeals decision on association law was identified between 2024 and September 2026.
That is itself worth knowing. Minnesota boards and owners arguing about declarations are working from persuasive authority and from the two Supreme Court cases that predate the window — Harkins (2022) and Windcliff Association v. Breyfogle, 988 N.W.2d 911 (Minn. 2023).
What to watch next
The petition-for-review status of Mohn could not be verified. Treat it as an unreviewed nonprecedential decision.
Nothing is pending legislatively: Chapter 82 left assessment allocation alone, and the insurance task force's recommendation to carve insurance-driven increases out of § 515B.3-115 has no bill behind it.
This describes a decided case. It does not predict how any particular assessment dispute comes out.
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