An association asked for a roof and got $52,482.81, and the Eighth Circuit says that is final
An association asked for a roof and got $52,482.81, and the Eighth Circuit says that is final
2026-09-15 · North Dakota · Courts
A homeowners association's roof claim went to appraisal. The panel awarded $52,482.81. Everyone agreed a full reroofing would cost $742,163.80. On September 4, 2026 the Eighth Circuit held the association gets the smaller number and no review of it.1
Jamestown Villas Homeowners Association v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, No. 25-3154, was submitted May 14, 2026 and decided September 4, 2026. Judge Stras wrote for a panel that also included Judges L.R. Smith and Benton. It is a published opinion of the court of appeals that sits over North Dakota.
The opinion opens by announcing the answer:
“This insurance dispute has a simple answer. An appraisal panel awarded a homeowners' association $52,482.81 to repair roof damage. Under Minnesota law, the insurer does not have to pay a penny more, so we affirm the judgment.”
The matching argument, and why it lost
The association's position was the one associations always take in a partial-roof loss: the replacement shingles would not match, so the whole roof has to go. The court held the panel had already decided that when it picked a number.
“In other words, the panel's 'deci[sion] [on] the "amount of [the] loss,"' necessarily settled whether the replacement shingles were close enough to be of 'like kind and quality.' Or else the panel would have awarded more.”
“And then, consistent with the presumption in 'support of an award,' … we cannot review it for 'adequacy or inadequacy of amount' … Included among the nonreviewable factual questions are whether the shingles were a 'reasonable color match,' because it is a 'mere incident[] to a determination of the amount of loss or damage.' … Our role begins and ends there.”
A caveat that matters, and one that does not save you
The substantive rules applied are Minnesota's, because the case came up from the District of Minnesota. This is not a statement of North Dakota insurance law, and nobody should quote it as one.
But it is binding Eighth Circuit precedent, and North Dakota sits in the Eighth Circuit. When a North Dakota association's appraisal dispute reaches federal court, this is the panel that will hear it, applying a presumption in favour of the award and a rule that adequacy of amount is off the table. The direction of travel is not in doubt.
The footnote that matters most
The district court, faced with an award it thought unclear, sent clarifying questions back to the appraisers. The Eighth Circuit said it should not have:
“In fact, this case should have been over at the start. In the absence of ambiguity, the district court never should have sent clarifying questions to the appraisers. … The extra step ended up making no difference, however, because the court confirmed the award once it saw the answers.”
So the association's best procedural hope — that a court will go back and ask the panel what it meant — is available only where the award is genuinely ambiguous. A bare number is not ambiguous. It is an answer.
What this changes about how an association uses appraisal
Appraisal is not a cheap preliminary round. It is the merits. A board that invokes appraisal to “get a number on the table” with the intention of litigating afterwards is invoking the thing that ends the dispute.
Put the matching question to the panel explicitly, in writing, before it rules. The whole loss here turned on whether the panel had considered matching. The court held it must have, because it awarded what it awarded. An association that documents the scope question in advance at least preserves a record of what was and was not before the panel.
Choose the appraiser like you are choosing the decision-maker, because you are. The presumption runs in favour of the award. The appraiser your association names is the last point at which the board influences the outcome.
Know the deductible and the coverage form before the storm. Whether roofs are insured on a replacement-cost basis is now a live variable: the 2026 secondary-market rules require the master policy to provide replacement-cost coverage excluding roofs. A roof insured on an actual-cash-value basis produces a smaller number before any appraiser is appointed. Our North Dakota insurance requirements page covers what the master policy should carry.
How this stacks with North Dakota's new statute
This is where the two halves of 2026 meet for a North Dakota board. Since August 1, 2025, N.D.C.C. § 26.1-39-29 has required a policyholder to obtain “an adverse adjudication by a court of law” that the insurer “breached the insurance contract,” with a final judgment, before a bad-faith claim may proceed.
An appraisal award is not that. It is not an adjudication by a court, and it does not find a breach. An association that goes to appraisal, receives a number it regards as indefensible, and then wants to allege bad faith has, on the face of the statute, no route to it — and under Jamestown Villas, no route to review of the number either.
What to watch next
Watch for the first North Dakota association appraisal dispute to reach the Eighth Circuit under North Dakota law rather than Minnesota's, which is when the reasoning gets tested against this state's own precedent. Watch also whether North Dakota carriers begin pressing appraisal earlier in hail claims now that the circuit has said so clearly how little survives it.
Related North Dakota HOA Topics
Stay on top of North Dakota HOA law
Every week: new North Dakota legislation, court rulings, and regulatory developments affecting condos, planned communities, and property managers. Free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.