Virginia owners cannot re-argue defences the appeal court already rejected
Virginia owners cannot re-argue defences the appeal court already rejected
2026-09-19 · Virginia · Courts
An owner who has already lost a defence on appeal cannot raise it again in the next appeal of the same case. The Court of Appeals of Virginia applied that rule against a self-represented homeowner in Gallop v. Cameron Bay Homeowners Association, consolidated Record Nos. 1524-24-2, 1525-24-2, 1526-24-2 and 1527-24-2, an unpublished per curiam opinion decided October 14, 2025.1
The assessment dispute behind it has been running since 2016.
Law of the case, stated plainly
The court quoted Rowe v. Rowe, 33 Va. App. 250, 262 (2000): “[w]here there have been two appeals in the same case, between the same parties, and the facts are the same, nothing decided on the first appeal can be re-examined on a second appeal.”
The rationale it gave is administrative rather than philosophical: “To allow a trial judge to disregard the holding of a previous panel would be an inefficient administration of justice, increasing the 'labor of appellate courts and the costs to' ” the parties.
Applied here: “To the extent that Gallop's arguments challenge the underlying merits of these matters, we have already considered and affirmed the circuit court's holdings regarding Gallop's defenses, thereby foreclosing relitigation of these issues.”
What the fee orders actually were
The appeal concerned four separate judgment orders for appellate attorney fees and costs — $5,364.16, $3,414.66, $3,410.16 and $6,338.32 — entered after the Court of Appeals remanded the fee question to the circuit court.
On remand the association produced a binder of itemised fees and costs. The circuit court held that Cameron Bay had prevailed both below and on appeal, that the owner “had asserted several unmeritorious defenses, which 'complicated a very simple case'”, that the association had produced “detailed and itemized proof of the time and labor expended”, and that the hourly rate was below market.
The appellate standard applied to those findings was the most deferential one: factual findings are reversed “only if plainly wrong or not supported by credible evidence.”
The procedural holding on Rule 5A:30(b)
The owner's best argument was about timing. He contended the association's fee request was untimely under Rule 1:1A, which carries a 30-day limit.
The court rejected the analogy. Under Rule 5A:30(b), the Court of Appeals “may award to a party who has made such request, all of their attorney fees, or any part thereof, or remand the issue for determination as directed in the mandate.” Having invoked its authority under Rule 5A:30(b)(2)(B) to remand, the fee determination proceeded on the appellate court's mandate — not under Rule 1:1A's separate clock.
For a Virginia association that has won an appeal, that is a practically useful distinction: the remand route does not import a 30-day filing trap.
The boundary of what was remanded
One part of the owner's appeal failed for the opposite reason. He sought reconsideration of fees stemming from the earlier circuit court proceedings, as distinct from the appellate fees. The court's answer was jurisdictional in character: “As we did not instruct the circuit court on remand to address its own award of attorney fees, it did not err by declining to reconsider this issue.”
A remand does what the mandate says and no more. That limit runs both ways — an association reading its own mandate expansively would meet the same answer.
Why this matters beyond the parties
Self-represented owners are common in Virginia assessment litigation, and the structural risk they face is visible in this record. Each successive appeal generated its own fee award. The doctrines that ended the case — law of the case, Rule 5A:18 preservation, Rule 5A:20(e) briefing requirements — are procedural rules, not answers on the merits, and they applied with full force to a party without counsel.
The Ombudsman route exists partly because of this. A notice of final adverse decision costs $25 and no lawyer. It also produces no money and no injunction, and its jurisdiction runs only to whether a decision conflicts with the laws and regulations governing common interest communities.
The conditions that change the answer
Unpublished. The opinion is not designated for publication under Code § 17.1-413(A).
Law of the case requires the same case, parties and facts. A new dispute, even on similar covenants, is not foreclosed by it.
The fee awards rest on a contractual basis established earlier in the litigation, not on any statute of general application.
What to watch next
Neither of the two attorney-fee provisions most relevant to Virginia associations changed in 2026. The pressure on collections practice arrives instead on July 1, 2027, with the Uniform Consumer Debt Default Judgments Act.
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