The holding on committee authority

The more consequential paragraph is about the association’s own bodies:

“[¶ 33] Even assuming such permission had been granted, the HOA board, president, and Design Committee did not have the authority to override or amend the Covenants. … Neither the Covenants nor the bylaws give the HOA board, president, or Design Committee the ability to amend the Covenants or approve non-conforming uses. The power to amend the Covenants is reserved to the membership of the HOA. Pursuant to Section 13, the Covenants can only be amended, modified, or altered by the written consent of the owners of 70% or more of the lots in the subdivision.”

A design or architectural committee decides applications under the covenants. It does not have the amendment power, and an approval it grants cannot bless a use the covenants prohibit. Where the declaration sets an amendment threshold — here 70% of lots in writing — that threshold is the only route.

A conditional approval does not travel

The 2010 approval was not unconditional. It was permission to make wine in a barn with no outside employees and no business conducted on the lot. By 2022 the activity had passed each of those conditions. The Court’s analysis of why the use was commercial is quotable:

“[¶ 29] … The Winery’s activities on Lot 3B unquestionably involve ‘conducting or allowing the exchange of goods or services involving transportation from place to place.’ The Winery currently ships wine to locations throughout Wyoming and numerous other states, holds wine tastings where members of the public can purchase wine and other merchandise that are not agricultural products, and generates revenue of over $2 million.”

The definition of “commercial” comes from Winney v. Hoback Ranches Property Owners Improvement & Service District, 2021 WY 128, 499 P.3d 254. Separately, the Court noted that W.S. § 12-1-101(xx) describes a winery as a commercial enterprise.

Any lot owner could enforce, and did

The association did not bring this case. Section 9 of the Dairy Subdivision covenants permits enforcement by the board, the Design Committee, or any lot owner, and the neighbours used it. That structure is common in Wyoming declarations and it means a board’s decision not to act does not end the matter.

The covenants also contained an express consent-to-injunction clause. The Court still weighed the equities (¶ 49), applying the framework from Winney v. Hoback Ranches, 2023 WY 113, 539 P.3d 74 — gravity and wilfulness of the violation, delay, and the balance of cost and benefit. On wilfulness it treated the violating owner’s status as a licensed attorney as relevant (¶ 50).

Laches did not save the use

The delay argument failed. The neighbours learned the full extent of the operation in 2020 and sued in 2022. The Court applied Moncrief v. Sohio Petroleum Co., 775 P.2d 1021 (Wyo. 1989). Growth of a non-conforming use over a decade did not convert it into a right, and the clock ran from knowledge of the scale of the activity rather than from its beginning.

The contrast with Rafter J

Three months earlier the Court had decided Rafter J Ranch Homeowner’s Ass’n v. Stage Stop, Inc., 2024 WY 114, 558 P.3d 562, where an association sued its own lot owner over workforce-housing apartments and lost, because the covenant for that lot said it “may be used for any commercial purpose.” The two cases run on the same rule — the words of the declaration govern — and reach opposite results because the declarations say opposite things. Wyoming has no comprehensive HOA statute to supply a default either way.