An Oklahoma association's fee award was cut by $10,670 for block billing
An Oklahoma association's fee award was cut by $10,670 for block billing
2026-09-15 · Oklahoma · Courts
An Oklahoma association that wins a covenant-enforcement appeal does not automatically collect what its lawyers billed. In Grand Crest Owners Association, Inc. v. Stites, 2026 OK CIV APP 22, Division II took a $53,990 appeal-related fee award apart line by line and modified it down to $43,320.1
Decided April 6, 2026, mandate July 8, 2026, Fischer, J., writing. Affirmed as modified.
Entitlement was settled; only the amount was live
At ¶22: “Generally, appeal-related attorney fees are only 'recoverable if statutory authority exists for their award in the trial court.'… In Grand Crest I this Court granted Grand Crest's application for appeal-related attorney fees pursuant to 12 O.S. § 1141.5. Grand Crest's entitlement to appeal-related attorney fees, pursuant to the law of the case, is thus not in question; only the amount remains in question.”
The earlier decision, Grand Crest Owners Ass'n v. Stites, 2022 OK CIV APP 16, 512 P.3d 800, had held the bylaws' restrictive covenants enforceable against the defendants' property interests. So this is the second appeal in the same fight, and the subject is the bill.
The two cuts
Post-judgment collection is not appellate work. At ¶42, in a single sentence: “Post-judgment collection efforts instituted in the district court are not services 'performed' in the appellate courts.”
Block billing loses. At ¶48: “Block billing, or entries which lack specificity, do not fulfill the fee applicant's obligation to submit detailed time records.”
The court also struck entries tied to claims that carried no fee authority at all, and then stated the result at ¶50: “The award of attorney fees to Grand Crest is modified to $43,320 and affirmed.”
What the owners did not get to see
The defendants tried to discover the association's fee arrangement with its insurer — on the theory that fees paid by a carrier are not fees the association reasonably incurred. The district court quashed that discovery and the panel affirmed, holding at ¶28: “In circumstances such as the present case, where a prevailing party is entitled to a statutory award of 'reasonable' fees, an attorney's contract with his client is a matter between the client and the attorney.”
That is a meaningful shield. An Oklahoma association defending its covenant with directors-and-officers or general-liability coverage behind it does not open its coverage arrangements to the owner it is suing.
What this means for how a board's counsel bills
Segregate fee-bearing from non-fee-bearing claims from the first invoice. Section 1141.5 supports some claims and not others. Time recorded against a claim with no fee authority is not recoverable no matter how reasonable it was, and no amount of after-the-fact allocation fixes an entry that never said which claim it was for.
Keep appellate time in its own file. The ¶42 holding is categorical. Collection work in the district court — garnishments, asset hearings, judgment liens — is real legal work and may be recoverable somewhere else, but it is not “performed” in the appellate courts and does not belong in an appeal-related fee application.
Ban block billing on association files. “Review file, correspond with client, research issues, draft brief — 4.3 hours” is exactly the entry ¶48 rejects. The fee applicant carries the burden of detailed records, and the entries that cannot be parsed are the entries that get struck.
The number that matters to members
An association that spends $53,990 on the fee phase of the second appeal in a covenant case has spent a great deal of money, and the judgment it recovers comes from one owner who may or may not be able to pay it. The members fund the difference. Grand Crest is the clearest recent Oklahoma statement of how much of an enforcement bill actually comes back, and the answer is: most of it, minus whatever the records cannot support.
What to watch next
Oklahoma has no statutory fee-shifting provision written for community associations as such — § 1141.5 is a general provision that associations have made use of. If a future legislature revisits association litigation, the fee rule is the lever that changes everyone's behaviour fastest, in both directions.
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