Never having said yes before is a defence
Never having said yes before is a defence
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Courts
What happened. On 9 March 2026 the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed summary judgment for a Harrisburg association that had refused a unit owner permission to drill a 4.5-inch HVAC exhaust hole through an exterior wall. Pauletta v. Riverview Manor Homeowners' Association, No. 760 MDA 2025, is a non-precedential memorandum by Kunselman, J., with McLaughlin and Lane, JJ.1
What the owner argued
Pauletta bought unit 310 in 2010 and sought approval for the exhaust hole in August 2023. The association asked for a professional proposal, a product pamphlet, architectural and engineering studies, and approval from the Harrisburg Architectural Society. He did not supply them, and argued that other owners — and the association itself — had drilled comparable holes. The association denied the request citing structural risk.
He sued in Dauphin County in November 2023, alleging negligence, breach of the duty of good faith under 68 Pa.C.S. § 5113, abuse of the association's design-control powers, and a violation of his alteration rights under § 5213. Summary judgment went against him on 30 May 2025.
The standard the court applied
The Superior Court adopted the trial court's findings, quoted at slip op. 6-7. On the general duties:
"[A]lthough Riverview HOA owed Pauletta certain duties under the UPCA, namely, to act in good faith, with reasonable care, and in the best interests of the association, and to perform its duties with care, skill and diligence of a person of ordinary prudence under similar circumstances, Pauletta failed to provide evidence that Riverview HOA breached or violated these duties, in particular that he was treated differently than the standard, when it denied his request[.]"1
And on good faith specifically: "Pauletta failed to provide evidence that the HOA acted fraudulently, in bad faith, or with self-dealing; instead, the HOA acted in accordance with the declaration and exercised its discretion appropriately; Pauletta's mere disagreement with the HOA's process and decision was insufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to this claim[.]" (at 7)
The sentence that carries the defence
On the abuse-of-design-control claim, the court framed the test in two components, both of which an association controls:
"[T]he undisputed evidence showed that Riverview HOA had never granted a request like Pauletta's before, and it made reasonable inquiries to make a fully informed decision, which does not constitute abuse[.]" (at 7)1
Consistency of past practice, plus reasonable inquiry. That is a workable standard, and it is one an association either satisfies at the time or cannot reconstruct later.
Note what did the work in this case. The association won not because the denial was substantively correct about structural risk — the court never reached that — but because it had never approved a comparable request and had asked for information before deciding. The owner's "other people have holes" argument failed on the record rather than in principle.
The § 5213 point
On alterations the court held: "Pauletta was required to seek approval from the HOA for his project per the community's declaration and section 5213 but failed to provide Riverview HOA with documents to demonstrate the work would not compromise the structural integrity of the building[.]" (at 7)
The burden of demonstrating that an alteration will not compromise structural integrity sat with the owner proposing it. An association that asks for engineering documentation and does not receive it is on considerably firmer ground than one that denies without asking.
Three practical readings
- Ask before you refuse. The "reasonable inquiries to make a fully informed decision" limb is the half of the test most often failed. A denial that follows a documented request for specified information is a different legal object from a denial issued at a meeting.
- Know your own precedents. The association could say it had never granted a request like this before. Many boards genuinely do not know their approval history, because nobody keeps an architectural-decision log. That log is what converts "we've never allowed it" from an assertion into evidence.
- Disagreement is not a triable issue. The court was explicit that an owner's disagreement with the process and the outcome does not create a genuine issue of material fact. What would is evidence of fraud, bad faith, self-dealing, or different treatment from the standard.
The wrinkle worth knowing
Riverview Manor is a multi-storey condominium building that is, as a matter of law, a planned community under the Uniform Planned Community Act, 68 Pa.C.S. §§ 5101-5414 (slip op. at 1). The Superior Court corrected the trial court at footnote 4 for repeatedly citing the Uniform Condominium Act instead.1
That is not a technicality, and Pennsylvania boards and their counsel get it wrong regularly. What a building looks like does not determine which chapter of Title 68 governs it; the declaration does. The condominium and planned-community chapters are parallel but not identical — § 3303 was amended by Act 115 of 2022 while its twin § 5303 was last amended in 2018 — so citing the wrong one can produce the wrong answer, not merely an untidy brief.
Its weight, stated honestly
This is a non-precedential memorandum under Operating Procedure 65.37. It does not bind any court. It is useful as a reliable indication of how a Superior Court panel applied §§ 5113 and 5213 and the design-control standard on a clean record, and as a description of what an association had to have done to win on summary judgment. It is not authority to cite as controlling.
The court also noted, at 3 n.1, that the trial court had dismissed the complaint with prejudice, which "is not the legal effect of summary judgment" — a procedural correction that did not change the outcome.
What to watch next
Very little, from the courts. No published, precedential Superior Court opinion involving a Pennsylvania association issued between January 2025 and September 2026. The association law being made in Pennsylvania right now is being made in non-precedential memoranda like this one and in Commonwealth Court, which is a thin and unstable basis for a board trying to know where it stands.
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