You cannot sue over common areas alone
You cannot sue over common areas alone
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Courts
What happened. On 28 August 2026 the Commonwealth Court affirmed the dismissal of a challenge to a homeowners association board election and to a deed conveying a community's common areas between two phase associations — because the owners bringing it had not joined everyone whose property interest the case would affect. Macias v. Southfield Crossing Homeowners Association, Inc., Nos. 272 & 565 C.D. 2025, opinion by Judge Wallace.1
What was challenged
Two things: a 2020 board election, and a deed conveying the community's common areas from the Phase II association to the Phase I association. The court did not reach the merits of either.
The holding
All Phase I owners were indispensable parties, and without them the case could not proceed. The court's reasoning, at slip op. 9-10:
"Such relief directly impacts all Phase I owners' interest in their property through the Common Areas in general, as well as the associated stormwater management system… Where litigation adversely affects an individual's right to the use and enjoyment of his property, that party must be joined as an indispensable party."1
The distinction the court drew
It separated this case from an earlier decision, Belleville v. David Cutler Group, on the nature of the interest at stake: there "the interest asserted was purely monetary. Here, the interest in question is the actual use and enjoyment of property, which is a constitutionally protected interest." (at 10)
That line is the useful part. A dispute about money is one thing; a dispute that changes who owns and controls the ground owners walk on is another, and the second requires everyone affected at the table.
Why phased communities produce this problem
Pennsylvania has a great many multi-phase planned communities, built out over years by a developer who created a separate association for each phase, or created one and folded phases into it, or intended to and did not finish. The paperwork is frequently inconsistent with what people on the ground believe.
When phases are eventually rationalised — common areas consolidated under one association, a phase association dissolved, a stormwater facility conveyed — the conveyance moves a property interest that every owner in the affected phase holds. The Macias court treated that as a use-and-enjoyment interest rather than a financial one, which is what triggered mandatory joinder.
The stormwater management system's appearance in that sentence is not incidental. It is the common element with an ongoing obligation attached, and moving it moves the obligation.
The practical consequence for an owner
It makes this kind of challenge very hard to bring. Joining every owner in a phase means naming and serving potentially hundreds of parties, most of whom have no view on the matter. That is a real barrier, and it is imposed before any court examines whether the conveyance or the election was proper.
The realistic reading for an owner who thinks a common-area transfer was improperly done: the procedural obstacle is the case. Counsel's first question will be who must be joined, and the answer determines whether the challenge is viable at all.
The practical consequence for a board
Two, pointing in opposite directions.
The first is protective. A board that conveys common areas between phase associations, following its documents, is not easily unwound afterwards. The joinder requirement that blocked these plaintiffs blocks others.
The second is a caution, and it is the more important one. Macias does not say the conveyance was proper. It says the plaintiffs could not get to that question as constituted. The case is no approval of what Southfield Crossing did — the merits were never examined.
And the same principle cuts against a board that wants certainty. An association seeking a declaratory judgment that a historical common-area conveyance was valid — a genuinely common need, particularly when a title company raises it at a closing — faces the same joinder problem. If every owner's use and enjoyment interest is affected, every owner is indispensable to the action that would settle it.
What to do before it becomes a dispute
The preventable version of this problem is documentary. Where a community has phases:
- Establish which association holds title to which common-area parcel, from the deeds and the recorded plat rather than from the budget or from what the manager says.
- Identify any parcel carrying an ongoing obligation — stormwater basins above all — and confirm which entity is named on the permit and which is actually maintaining it. Those two are not always the same body.
- Where a consolidation is contemplated, treat owner consent as the substance rather than a formality. A conveyance every owner was properly notified of and had the chance to vote on is a different proposition from one discovered later in a title search.
What to watch next
The Commonwealth Court is where Pennsylvania association law is currently being made. No published, precedential Superior Court opinion involving an association issued between January 2025 and September 2026; the decisions in this space are Commonwealth Court opinions like this one and non-precedential Superior Court memoranda. Macias is a published opinion, which makes it worth more than most of what is available.
Notably, it decides a procedural question rather than a substantive one. That is the pattern across the whole 2025-2026 Pennsylvania appellate record for associations: joinder, waiver, appealability. The courts are not being asked — or are not reaching — the substantive questions about assessments, covenants and governance that boards actually need answered.
Related Pennsylvania HOA Topics
Stay on top of Pennsylvania HOA law
Every week: new Pennsylvania legislation, court rulings, and regulatory developments affecting condos, planned communities, and property managers. Free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.